Responsible Travel Policy

The majority of our placements are in the developing world and often the people and the environment are vulnerable and sensitive. Our care for these places is the driving force behind our arranging placements for visitors. For this reason we are extremely concerned to ensure that our impact is always positive and never damaging.

PoD's social policy

Through our projects our volunteers have a major focus on social responsibility, whether it is through teaching English, healthcare, animal rescue, or helping at one of the many care homes and orphanages we work with.

We aim to bring benefit to local communities, especially the vulnerable and the poor and to help sustain a healthy environment where both people and nature can thrive.

To aid this process, we try to educate and encourage our volunteers and customers to:

• Understand and respect local cultures and customs
• Get involved with local communities
• Buy locally and support local businesses

PoD's economic policy

By sending volunteers to work with local communities we are both directly and indirectly contributing to the local economies. Our volunteers are passing on skills that can help locals to earn a living through teaching, healthcare and transfer of professional skills.

Volunteers are also putting money directly into the economy by living and working abroad. The majority of the fee they pay to PoD is spent in-country and we always work with locally owned businesses where possible. In each of the countries we work in we are responsible for the employment of nationals from that country.

Through the PoD Charity we make donations to charitable projects in the countries we work in and encourage our volunteers to undertake fundraising to support the projects they will work / have worked in.

PoD's environmental policy

We are very conscious of the potential for environmental impact and we are pro-actively trying to minimise this in the UK and overseas, in order ensure a healthy world for future travellers.

The greatest single impact of international travel is the carbon dioxide created from flights. We work with an Amazon research charity to help protect an area of rainforest as well as developing strategies to protect rainforests for the future. We would also encourage you to directly offset the carbon from your flights through an organisation such as www.climatecare.org.

While our volunteers and customers are overseas, we try to encourage:

• Careful disposal of litter
• Minimising waste
• Careful use of water
• Use of refillable water bottles
• Buying locally
• Not damaging the local environment e.g. coral, historic sites
• Not supporting activities that damage the environment e.g. souvenirs made from animals or artefacts

For each country we also provide a set of specific suggestions.

Through our projects, volunteers are also directly helping the environment, such as through our jungle conservation project in Peru where reforestation is a major initiative.

And at the PoD office in the UK:

• Active recycling - we recycle as much of our office waste as possible
• Use of recycled products - where possible we use paper, envelopes and other supplies that are made from a recycled or sustainable source
• Minimising amount of printing – we have phased our printed brochures and use online resources where possible. All volunteer information / communications are sent electronically
• Printing – where it does have to be printed, using an environmentally friendly wax printer
• Careful energy usage
• Installation of secondary glazing to prevent heat loss
• All staff are encouraged to walk / cycle to work and everyone does!