EVA Travel

Sheila beside a green statue in Luang Prabang

over 50s group having dinner in Marrakech

Matt Fenton working on volunteer project in Imlil

Sheila donating Aston Villa shirts to the Batwa pygmies in Bwindi

Someone jokingly suggested this as a blog title to me a few months ago and while I thought it was funny I didn’t really take it seriously at the time. But in the past few weeks or months, more and more of the questions I am seeing both in my messages and on Facebook comments lead me to believe that the ‘joke’ was actually spot on and these are 2 burning questions. Who’s Matt and where is Sheila!  

I think I can safely start with where’s Sheila. I am safely back at home having been all over the world for most of 2025. For someone who wasn’t really a traveller and who hates flying, I’ve conquered a lot of fears to do all of that. But why on earth am I doing it? Good question and while many of my readers will know the answer it’s worth going there again so that there’s a record of how EVA started and where it might be going.  

My own give-back travel journey started in 2018 and I completed 3 tours with We Are Bamboo, an eco-travel company that offered these amazing opportunities for purposeful travel. Unfortunately that company collapsed in 2022 leaving debts of up to 5 million dollars and thousands of customers out of pocket. I used my money advice skills to help people seek refunds from banks, insurance companies, credit cards and elevated many of these cases to the Financial Ombudsman or similar service in several countries.  That proved successful for many and it was clear as time passed that the drive and passion for give-back travel had not diminished.  

I set up a Facebook Group called the Ethical Travel Hub and the purpose initially was to act as a connecting point for the traveller and the old Bamboo tour guides, most of whom were now running their own companies. That system worked well, but it probably worked too well as I was posting on Facebook and answering messages 18 hours a day and 7 days a week!  

As time went by and the Facebook group grew, the community were very much a part of the direction we took. Polls, discussions, contests, logo suggestions- all were part of forming the identity of this group that we eventually called EVA- Ethical Volunteering Adventures. The name sought to define who we were and what we aspired to. Give back or volunteering was at the heart of everything we would do, but we wanted to be sure that ethical treatment of the customers, animals and the environment was central as well.  

My original intention was to offer the 3 tours people wanted to Morocco, Tanzania and Northern Ireland while continuing to promote the legacy operators. However it soon became clear that what I was doing was in danger of repeating the mistakes that had led to the downfall of Bamboo and the losses suffered by the community. There was no protection for operator failure, no compliance with EU and UK regulations and no proper financial pipeline for payments being made.  

The other factor that was concerning me at this stage was continuity. It was clear that EVA meant a lot to many people, tours were being booked and I wasn’t getting any younger. It may seem ghoulish but I was concerned about succession and what would happen to EVA if I unexpectedly died. I had some legal arrangements in place for the return of money but no-one in place to keep the tours running.  

And this is where we find out who Matt is and what he does! I contacted one of the independent tour leaders who promoted on our Facebook group and had ABTOT cover. I looked into this and other schemes but I didn’t meet the criteria to apply. So I was directed to speak to Matt Fenton, the CEO of Inspired Ventures Limited. I feel a bit bad now about my first calls with him- I was very suspicious and not at all ready to trust anyone with EVA. But after many, many, many hours of phone calls, zooms and a face-to-face meeting I decided that Inspired Ventures was what I needed to protect our project. Matt shares the vision and passion for give-back travel and has been in travel for decades. (He’ll hate that ‘decades’ bit!) 

By agreeing to have our tours sold through Inspired and the booking platform We Travel, all tours sold through EVA are fully protected for operator financial failure regardless of where you live in the world. The money is collected and retained by We Travel and protected in relation to the tour you will be going on. For me, that’s a really big deal having supported hundreds of travellers through the loss of their money with Bamboo. 

So as time went on, EVA Travel got bigger and got a website. That passion for give back travel did not disappear with Bamboo and with Matt’s expertise and background we were able to develop more tours and support more projects around the world. We worked under a loose partnership agreement until August 2025 when I agreed to the next stage of the plan.  

EVA is now formally a part of Inspired Ventures Limited. It has its own identity within the company and a team is starting to grow around us. In addition to Matt who bounces ideas with me almost every day, Lucy Lyne has become the EVA Director of Operations having worked with Inspired for many years. I appreciate that this is not what everyone expected when we started the group 3 years ago, but to do this legally and financially correctly it was necessary to take steps to safeguard the position of EVA Volunteer Travel. 

In the next year, we’ll introduce EVA hosts- current and former travellers who have expressed an interest in joining tours and act as liaison between the guests and ground operators. They’ll also set up the Facebook groups and WhatsApp chats so people can get to know each other. Matt went to Morocco with the group in November so was our first EVA host and I know he truly enjoyed meeting everyone in the group. And they enjoyed meeting him, so much so that he’s an honorary member of their coffee club.

The final piece for the set up will be the establishment of the EVA Travel Charitable Foundation. I’ve mentioned it before but it will cost quite a bit of money to set it up and I’m working on that. The donations we make to projects will eventually be clearly visible and transparent on the Foundation page so you can see how much and where your money goes. If we sell merchandise like shirts or mugs we can also put the profits directly into the Foundation so that we start to build an emergency fund for where we might need it.  

So that’s who Matt is and what he does. Sheila? I’m at home for Christmas but 2026 looks very exciting for EVA. We’ll do our first Uganda-Rwanda tour in February, followed by our first Borneo tours starting in April. I’ll head over to South America to check out Colombia and Bolivia for projects for 2027 and then on to French Polynesia to see if we can put together a give back tour there as well.  

Thanks for reading if you get this far and thank you for your interest and support of EVA Travel. Travelling with purpose is the most meaningful way to see the world and once you take your first journey all other travel can seem flat. So hopefully we’ll see you out in the world one day joining us as we give a little back wherever we go.