POLICIES AND PROCEDURES
We are extremely concerned to ensure that our impact is always positive and never damaging
Our placements are in locations where the people and 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.
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.
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.
We are very conscious of the potential for environmental impact and we are pro-actively trying to minimise this overseas and in the UK. Please see our steps below which we recommend for volunteers and 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.
It is important that we regularly visit our volunteer placements around the world but we ensure that this is done responsibly by offsetting the CO2 emissions from all Pod staff trips.