We have six people in our UK office in Manchester, two people in our office in the Philippines and we have a couple of people in the US at the moment. In all the countries we work there are coordinators that are direct employees and then in-country employees that are paid fees to coordinate. It’s quite a large network.

The PIE: How do you find programmes to work with?

HJ: There are thousands of volunteer projects across the world. A lot of people are doing really fabulous work and some of them aren’t quite frankly.  We have to make sure that all of our projects are genuine and genuinely sustainable as well. There are ash clouds and political insurgencies and all these things that happen that make countries more or less popular, and if the volunteers dry out going into an area it’s important that the rug doesn’t get pulled out from under them.

“A lot of people are doing really fabulous work and some of them aren’t quite frankly”

We have to be responsible in how we enable support through volunteers so it doesn’t become dependency. All the projects we work with are locally led initiatives. Over the course of the week we receive probably 10 enquiries to work with us or people recommend projects to us. If we find something that looks interesting we’ll go and meet with that organisation in the country and check out the project. But we don’t readily bring on lots of new stuff because there is so much risk assessment involved.

The PIE: Can you give an example?

We started talking with a few programmes in the Middle East a couple of months ago but after the Arab Spring we had to put those conversations on hold until things were more stable from a safety perspective for our volunteers.

“After the Arab Spring we had to put those conversations on hold until things were more stable from a safety perspective”

The PIE: What does Kaya mean?

HJ: It’s a powerful word that’s in line with our philosophy and what we want to achieve because of what it means in a lot of our communities. In Filipino Waray-Waray language it means “I can do it”. In Zulu and a lot of the southern African tribal languages it means “my home”, in the sense of where I belong, not necessarily a physical house. And in Buddhism, Kaya is enlightenment.

The PIE: What’s next for the firm?

HJ: We have hosted over 1,000 volunteers to date, and are now growing rapidly, while still maintaining our focus on providing individual, personalised advice to each and every volunteer to ensure that we continue matching them to the right projects. North America is going to be a real focus for us over the next 12 months. We’ll be touring some US universities, popping in on study abroad offices, and meeting faculty that are interested in customised programmes.