History

i-to-i was started in 1994 by Deirdre Bounds. Here she explains why…

"I had no idea when I stepped onto a plane fifteen years ago that my career break would lead to starting a travel company that touches thousands of lives every year.

That flight to find the 'real world' saw me teaching English in Japan, China and Greece and driving a backpackers bus in Sydney. I went eye-to-eye with fascinating cultures and travelers. But then I decided that it was time to come home and face the music.

But the music I kept on hearing as I sat in my tiny one room apartment was: there had to be a way to help others to have the same travel and life experiences that I did and make it much easier and more accessible."

Deirdre started i-to-i shortly after. She began teaching weekend TEFL courses across the UK. Her experience teaching abroad had given her a unique insight into what people needed from a TEFL course, so our courses were a great success from the very beginning.

Online TEFL

But that wasnt enough. We wanted to make the whole experience as simple and convenient as possible, we wanted to run a course that would allow people to work in their own time, from the comfort of their own homes so we came up with a solution that would change the face of TEFL forever.

The i-to-i online TEFL course was the first of its kind and it was an instant hit. Suddenly TEFL could be taken by anyone, no matter how busy they were or how far they lived from a TEFL program.

Meaningful Travel

We'd made TEFL simple, but we also wanted to make meaningful travel experiences easy to find and simple to book. Soon i-to-i was branching out into the travel sector and organizing volunteer projects across the globe.

Since then, the company has gone from strength to strength. We now provide 10,000 online TEFL courses every year and send over 5,000 people to volunteer projects all over the world. We have over 500 projects in 30 countries and we're adding more all the time.