Staff Interview with Christian Wenzel

What inspired you to found Volunteer World?

I’ve always loved traveling. I started backpacking as a student during my semester break and today I still seize any opportunity to explore a new country and visit Volunteer World projects. Traveling opened my eyes to many of the world’s most pressing issues – from people living in poverty to marine life dying due to plastics pollution. I realized that lots of people want to tackle these issues, but they don’t know how. On the other hand, many organizations are working on these problems already, but they’re lacking manpower.

Volunteer World is the connecting force between volunteers who want to make a difference and social projects who need support. Building the Volunteer World platform and providing social organizations with a user-friendly website that gives them easy access to passionate volunteers from all around the globe is my way of using my most valuable skills as an IT specialist for common good.

What makes Volunteer World unique?

I would sum up our organization’s unique traits with three words: transparency, quality, safety.

Transparency: Volunteer World is the first independent platform that connects volunteers and international NGOs on a global scale. On our platform, volunteers can browse and compare more than 1.400 projects in over 70 countries. The detailed country and project descriptions, the extended filter search, and the reviews from former participants help volunteers choose the right project based on accurate information. All project costs are disclosed and there are no hidden fees. We want to provide our volunteers with a meaningful travel experience and the best value for money.

Quality: Another important factor is quality control. We do not accept every project on our platform. Projects that are featured on Volunteer World have passed a multi-step quality verification process and meet our ethical standards. Our volunteers can trust our project selection and be sure we send them to great projects.

Safety: Our platform has an extra security layer, which ensures safe communication, reservation, and payment processes for both volunteers and social organizations.

Can you tell us about your role as Managing Director?

As a Managing Director, I’m responsible for the general performance of the company. That means I’m overseeing things like our business strategy development and implementation, budget planning, personnel management, etc. In addition to these tasks, I also run the IT department. My team is working each and every day to improve the Volunteer World user experience. That includes fixing bugs, adding new features, updating designs, and keeping up with cutting-edge technologies. As you can see, my day-to-day job actually includes very little traveling and lots of work in front of my computer.

What is Volunteer World’s mission and how do you make sure your efforts follow this mission?

Volunteer World’s mission is to provide every social project in the world with the opportunity to find much-needed volunteers in a safe, quick, and transparent way. Volunteer World creates a win-win situation for social organizations and volunteers. Social organizations can present their projects to thousands of interested people on an attractive, user-friendly website. Volunteers can browse and compare different projects around the world according to their own preferences and then directly book them online on our platform without paying any hidden fees. Every organization, no matter whether it’s big or small, whether its programming is generic or niche, whether it’s located in a city or rather remotely has the chance to present their projects and find the right volunteers.

My daily job is therefore deeply connected to our company’s mission. In this day and age, users expect a safe and smooth online experience. I work every day on making this a reality.

How do you use your experiences with information systems to create and continuously improve the Volunteer World website?

I’ve worked on IT projects in the nonprofit sector for over six years so I’ve acquired a lot of experience concerning what works on a website and what doesn’t. Given that some of our projects don’t have the capacity to maintain their own websites, we give them all the tools and infrastructure necessary to shine a light on their important work. 

Our mission is to make the processes for both volunteers and projects as simple and straightforward as possible while maintaining the highest level of security for everyone. We look at every single aspect of the website and see how we can improve the user experiences on both sides. To achieve this, we invest a lot of time in measuring our success, gathering feedback, and experimenting with the newest technologies. 

Why do you think it is important for people to travel and experience new cultures?

Our experiences make us who we are. In my view, traveling can teach you a great many things you can never learn in any school or university.  Getting to know different cultures and traditions helps to broaden your horizon, reflect about your own beliefs and values, and understand why people act in a certain way. I believe understanding others leads to more peace and acceptance in the world. On a more personal level, traveling has many benefits as well. Through traveling you can learn new languages, become more independent, test yourself in stressful situations, and spur your creativity. 

What inspires you most about other cultures while traveling?

One of the revelations I had during my travels surprised me a lot: people who have less give more. I met people who barely had enough to eat for themselves, who generously offered their food to perfect strangers with a brilliant smile. 

In many cultures, the sense of community is still much stronger than in most Western societies. People can rely on each other in difficult times. I loved experiencing this kind of community feeling. That’s one of the reasons why I want our volunteers to immerse in foreign cultures that offer different values, be inspired, and maybe take some of these approaches home with them.

What does meaningful travel mean to you?

Meaningful travel is the kind of travel that leaves a positive impact both on yourself and on your surroundings. Volunteering is a very meaningful experience. It helps you to learn new skills, build your character, and give something back to the local community at the same time.

Whenever I travel, I prepare for my trip by researching the local culture and customs. Instead of hiding out in a fancy resort, I like to explore local areas like markets and interact with people; this helps me to understand their values and consequently their way of life. In my opinion, immersing in the local culture gives you the best travel experience. My goal is to leave nothing behind except a positive impression.

If you could participate in any of the programs offered by Volunteer World, where would you go and why?

I absolutely love diving, so I take great pleasure in visiting our marine conservation projects around the world. Since we started Volunteer World, I’ve visited a bunch of the projects featured on our website. I enjoy meeting the program founders face-to-face, experience their passion for the project, and chat with them about their challenges and how we can help them reach their goals. Seeing how Volunteer World supports these social projects shows me why we decided to pursue our work in the first place. Making volunteers and program managers happy motivates me to work even harder.

Are there any current developments of projects Volunteer World is working on that our readers should know about?

We are constantly working to improve the Volunteer World experience, so we have a lot of different projects brewing at the moment. One of the most current developments is that Volunteer World is now available in different languages. We translated our content to German, French, and Dutch to give volunteers the opportunity to learn about the different travel destinations and projects in their native language. Most of the smaller projects cannot provide translations themselves, so this is a big help for them to reach a wider audience. 

We’re also planning to introduce payments in different currencies, and we’re working on things like mobile speed improvements, wishlists for volunteers, better offline support, and more.