Our ethics

What makes Inspire unique is our long-term relationship with each of our overseas community partners. We have personally worked with most of our charitable partner for over 5 years and have built up a unique trusting relationship with each of them.

Good Planning

We plan, monitor and review each of our projects with our partners to ensure our volunteers teams only carry out useful and requested work that is sustainable once they leave.

Watching Kids Our projects are not only about ensuring the volunteers have an amazing experience but that their host communities are also supported, involved and can see the long-term benefits of working with teams from the developed world.

We see our expeditions as a true two-way learning experience for both participants and hosts. We believe that tourism, if managed well can be a life-changing experience for the hosts as well as the guests.

Positive Impact

We believe that volunteers should not be a burden on their hosts. Each volunteer team covers all their own costs for accommodation, food and in-country travel, so the community is not expected to do this. We buy food locally from the local communities (where this is appropriate) so money is, once again, filtering back to our hosts.

Donations To Our Partner Charities

We ask all volunteer teams to fundraise for the cost of the work they will be doing; this includes buying materials such as cement, timber and paint. The donation includes covering the cost of the salaries of a team of skilled local workers who work with the team to ensure all of our projects are completed to the highest standard possible.

Local Labour

Using local workers provides employment in the community and offers a chance for interaction between the volunteer teams and the community. It also ensures that our projects are completed to local standards using local knowledge. We strongly believe in this ethic. To ensure projects are sustainable the community must be involved in the work, feel ownership over it and be able to fix or repair it, after the volunteer team has left.

Climate Change

Inspire Worldwide supports TreeDuty, a voluntary carbon offset scheme managed by one of our partner charities Excellent Development to plant trees in protected forests in Kenya. Every time our leaders fly to Africa, we donate to the scheme. http://www.excellentdevelopment.com/treeduty.php

Most carbon offsetting schemes simply offset carbon emissions, but TreeDuty does a lot more besides. The trees we’re helping to plant will make a huge difference to the lives of the local communities. Trees contribute to soil and water conservation – vital for transforming dry environments. Moreover, TreeDuty focuses on conserving trees that are difficult to grow or endangered and many of which have valuable medicinal properties. Planting these trees in protected forests not only helps to reclaim land that’s on the brink of becoming a desert, but also provides the local communities with a valuable natural resource.

Using seeds from the protected forest’s trees, and with training, water and the necessary tools provided by Excellent, community members can successfully grow these trees on their own land. Excellent also provides training on sustainably harvesting the trees, ensuring that the community can make an income from tree products – like traditional medicines and carving woods – but without cutting the trees down.