People to People's Care Team: The Right Thing to Do

We take our cues from industry standards even when they do not apply to us. It is important for us to use these standards to create the safest and best experience for our student delegates and their families.

A series of events led to the passage of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act (the Act) of 1996 (49 U.S.C. §§ 1136 & 41113). The intent of this legislation was for the NTSB and airlines to have plans in place to ensure, going forward, “that in the event of a major accident, the carrier is prepared to act in the best interests of survivors families; to treat survivors and families with dignity; and to respect the cultural and religious backgrounds of survivors and families.”

While People to People Ambassador Programs does not fall under the scope of this legislation, we do believe in the principles behind it, and have used it to construct our own plan for the families of our delegates.

No matter how small the event, we believe families should receive timely and accurate information, and it is our intent to make sure we fulfill those needs. Some of these needs include:

• Timely initial notification and accurate information delivered to the families
• Continuous updates on progress
• Logistical support for families’ travel to site
• Daily contact with families

A new cornerstone of the family assistance program is our CARE Team that we established last year. [UPDATE: We have a total of 28 CARE Team Members - including 11 core members, and me.] Here are three other People to People employees on our CARE Team:

Colleen Schaffer

Ben Tibbetts

Sean Yarnell

Each CARE Team member is trained to provide timely and accurate information and logistical support to families if and when they need it.

People to People Ambassador Programs has specifically trained each CARE Team member to:

• Understand and meet the needs of delegates and family members
• Uphold the importance of maintaining the confidential nature of information received and the family’s private information
• Thoroughly document all commitments made to families
• Clearly communicate our policies and practices to families
• Understand and appreciate cultural diversity

Over the past year since we rolled out our CARE Team training and preparation, we have been approached to share this plan and training with other major travel organizations.

As an industry leader, we eagerly shared this information. It’s not just about our organization traveling students safely. Our intent is to help every student be safe no matter what organization they select. We want to remain a leader in this industry in “doing what is right” for our students and families and by being proactive and ready in advance.

"Doing what is right" applies to each delegate. Even with no serious events to deal with during the 2010 travel season, we had members of the CARE Team dispatched around the world.

• In these few incidents, a student needed to come home for one reason or another.
• Rather than having a delegation leader return with the student and potentially disrupt the entire delegation, a CARE Team member meets the delegation and personally escorts the student home.
  
• The CARE Team members receive training to help these students during a stressful time while they maintain contact with the family to personally bring the student directly home.

At People to People Ambassador Programs, one of our core values is passion. We are passionate about our programs, our mission and our pursuit of excellence. We are passionate about safety. Being the first in the educational travel industry to develop and adopt a family assistance program (our CARE team), is just one way for our team to live that commitment.

Come back and see us next week and hear more great advice for eating and living healthy from April Davis, RD, CD, ACSM CES.

Until then, I’m wishing you safe and happy travels, 



Mike Bowers 

Senior Director of Health and Safety

What does our Health and Safety Team Do?

That is an interesting question and one that I receive more often then not. I think the fact that People to People Ambassador Programs is the only educational student travel organization to employ a full-time senior director of safety and health is at the root of the issue.

Does safety matter to other student travel organizations? Obviously the answer is yes. What I have found is that many of these organizations place the health and safety responsibilities with the operations director who clearly has many additional duties.

Here at People to People Ambassador Program, Our CEO and President both had the foresight to envision a department that focuses solely on developing and implementing policies and procedures designed to ensure every student and leader is safe while traveling with our organization. We do also have the Senior Director of Ground Operations but have split out the responsibilities related to the safety of the students into a separate department. I am blessed with the privilege of leading this fantastic group of overachieving individuals.

Let me give you a little closer glimpse of a couple people who are on my team (above, in action at an on-call meeting) and their responsibilities to help to better understand what we do and how we do it.

First off I would like to start with Wendy Armes (above). Wendy is currently the Supervisor of the Medical team and has three travel seasons under her belt. Wendy’s team is responsible for collecting a health form for every student prior to travel. We have learned over the years that the best way to prevent an unforeseen problem is to make sure everyone who needs to know of a medical condition knows it in advance of travel.

Once the health form is received, Wendy’s team then determines for which students we need additional information on to assure their safety. We currently screen for over 300 medical conditions like visual or hearing impairment, mobility limitation, diabetes, and life threatening allergies (just to name a few). This process is called a medical hold in which case we work with the family and parents to make sure we have a solid understanding of any limitations a student may have. Once we have this additional information, we can then start working on a reasonable accommodation to make sure that student has the same great experience any other student would expect to have.

Next I would like to introduce you to Bethany Cress (pictured above). Bethany spends her entire year developing procedures and processes to reduce the chance of any incident happening on a program. She develops and delivers the training to every single associate who answers a phone during the on-call season. By providing this extensive level of training the associates dealing directly with the leaders and parents are better positioned to respond quickly and consistently to all incidents. These incidents can range from the milder request to have a student call home to the more severe situation that calls for medical attention. (As mentioned in my last post, our current travel season is yielding more mild incidents, which is a good thing.)

During the summer travel season Bethany personally leads the on-call briefing every morning and every evening. Her obsession is to make sure that every single incident is followed up with timely and professionally to everyone’s satisfaction.

After the season comes to a close, Bethany then re-reviews every incident and looks for gaps in what transpired. Basically asking the question, "What did we want to happen?" "What did happen?" And was there a gap between those two results? If the answer is yes, she then goes to work to craft a better process and procedure to be implemented the following season to reduce the chance of that situation happening again. This new procedure then goes into the Leader Travel Handbook revisions and into the training curriculum for the next season and the whole process starts all over again.

This is just a small glimpse into some of what my team does here at People to People Ambassador Programs and only two of the many associates that have a singular focus. That focus is simply making sure every delegate and leader is safe on our programs. Maybe in future blogs I can expand on some of my other team members but for now, I am very proud to have these two outstanding women on my team and working to support every student.

So, what does the Senior Director of Health & Safety do? This brief article recently appeared in our 2010-2011 Ambassador Magazine and dives deeper into my role at People to People Ambassador Programs. I hope you find the information informative.

Until next time - I’m wishing you safe and happy travels.

Mike Bowers
Senior Director of Health and Safety

Introducing a Few Outstanding Worldwide Partners

I just returned from London, where I toured with some of our outstanding worldwide partners. At People to People Ambassador Programs, we carefully select partner organizations around the world to arrange and deliver our specialty programs under the watchful eye of our own program manager for each location. We have an extensive history and work so closely with these organizations that we tend to view them more as an extension of our own organization than a separate entity. Mike Clark, the owner and operator of Educational Cultural Exchanges Int. Ltd. (ECE), is an excellent example.

Last week, Senior Director of Travel Services Nicola Balmain and Charity Hakes, our Europe manager, sat down with me and my team to review the past season and to plan for the years to come. One of the key topics covered in this meeting focused on an enhanced listing of Service Excellence Standards. This extensive document outlines in explicit detail every expectation of hotels, restaurants, and safety practices at all venues we visit during these amazing journeys. This document is not new, nor is the practice of clearly reviewing these expectations with our partners. In fact, after each season the five program managers always debrief with our worldwide partners, sometimes on site in their countries, and sometimes in our program office here in the United States. We believe this is time well spent ensuring there are no questions left unanswered and that everyone associated with any given program we deliver is on the exact same page in terms of expectations. The enhanced standards are just another example of our passion for continued improvement and constant enhancements in the methods we use to ensure your child’s safety and health while traveling on one of our life-changing programs.

During the week, I was also able to spend some quality time with Deborah and Terry Newman, the owners and operators of Clarkes of London, our motor coach provider. I was able to spend much of the day touring the property that is home to over 51 state of the art motor coaches.

The Clarkes of London Story
The company’s roots go back to Deborah’s grandfather, ‘Snowy’ Clarke, back in 1958. Mr. Clarke was a coal miner by trade but purchased his first motor coach to provide trips to the seaside for local children. The business soon developed into providing coaches for the local schools and clubs.
In 1972, the control of the company passed to Snowy’s eldest son, Bill Clarke, who together with his wife began to broaden the services. Bill has since retired and his eldest daughter, Deborah, now runs the day-to-day operations of the company with the help and support of her husband, Terry, and an excellent staff of professionals. You won’t see any elaborate presidential office for Deborah. She prefers a modest desk located on the floor in the operations center where she can hear all and keep a watchful eye on every facet of the operation.

During my visit and review of the equipment maintenance schedule and driver qualifications, I heard multiple times from Deborah and Terry that they do the things they do not because they are required, but because it is “the right thing to do.” That is why this organization continues to strive for excellence by providing additional training above what is required by law for their drivers. In fact, each driver on their staff has completed an advanced course, which is just one of the many extra steps they take that led to their organization being selected as the 2009 Large Coach Operator of the Year at the Route One Operator Excellence Awards. This is an award they have received many times, but this year, it seemed to mean even more to them, as the nomination came from someone in the industry who is not affiliated with the company. Among other things, the judges cited their use of technology to improve services. I had the opportunity to view a sample of this technology called the tachograph. This unit prints out on a tachodisc the speed in which a driver has gone and the duration for which he has operated the motor coach. Several people in the Clarkes office are dedicated to monitoring this information, which clearly helps ensure a driver never works outside of the legal standards of safety for drivers.

I was able to view each of the motor coaches on the lot and all of them were in pristine condition. It was almost impossible to tell the older models apart from the brand-new arrivals. The four older models (7 years old) were in such great shape that other operators are competing to buy up Clarkes’ used equipment. Deborah and Terry take such good care of the equipment that you could hardly blame the other companies! This year, they plan to purchase another six 2010 models, which will replace the last remaining 2002 models. This past year, they purchased some custom motor coaches. In fact, the week prior to my arrival, the New England Patriots and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers played a scheduled National Football League game in London, and guess who won the contract to transport the team? It was, of course, Clarkes of London!

High Standards
Having managed many regional Ground Support equipment shops for several airlines, and knowing of the rigors involved with tracking each piece of equipment and ensuring that every unit is inspected on tight intervals to assure the safety of its operators, I couldn’t help but be impressed with the on-site maintenance shop the Clarkes have. You could literally eat off the floor in that shop, as its condition is maintained as well as the motor coaches themselves. They even have a body shop and a paint booth to remove the occasional scratch so that their motor coaches always remain in like-new condition. The shop is limited to touch-up paint and scratch removal, as the Clarkes report that they have yet to have been involved in any major accident with any of their vehicles. With the additional training their drivers get and the highly trained staff on site to watch out for their every move and to steer them away from any traffic issues, it’s not hard to see why.

This is truly a first-class operation, which is why Mike Clark of ECE (no relation to Clarkes of London) ultimately selected them to safety transport our students around the London area while on a People to People Ambassador program. And just one more reason why we value Mike Clark and his outstanding staff in the London office that look out for our every need and those of our valued Ambassadors.

With that, I wish you all safe travels and a healthy life.

Mike