Bright World Hub: Autumn 2019

In summer we shared the news of Su Warren and Jenny Rumble’s promotions to Director of Guardianships and Operations, and Director of Safeguarding and Operations, respectively. We’re pleased to say that both have been flourishing in their new roles, and the work they have each been doing has resulted in smoother processes, and even slicker operations.

Jack Wilkin joined the Guardianship Care Team in July. He has really hit the ground running and is already building some great relationships with schools, parents and agents. He has so far proved to be a great addition to the team.

We have been present at many industry events over the last few months. In September, Charlotte and Lana exhibited at ST Alphe UK in London (left), where they met partner schools and agents, new and old. Next up was ST Alphe Frankfurt, where Charlotte once again spent the weekend meeting with partners, this time updating them on some future Bright World initiatives. Cory attended The British Boarding Schools Workshop at the beginning of November, where he was able to strengthen relationships with schools and promote our school placements programme. At the time of writing, Lana is in Shanghai for the week to visit the offices of some of Bright World's key agent partners.

We are all very excited about next year’s annual company conference. As well as having our usual safeguarding and service training for all of our staff, we will also be hosting a celebratory lunch to mark the occasion of Bright World entering its 20th year of operation. Partner schools and agents have been invited to join the festivities on 9th June to help us to celebrate our landmark year. If you have not yet received an invite and would like to attend, then please do get in touch.

Our students will soon be off relaxing during the Christmas break, but there will be no time for our guardianship care department to put their feet up. No sooner than all their students have left school, our Guardianship Care Managers will already be finalising all the details of their return to school. All taxi journeys and flight details will be checked and checked again to ensure that all student’s travel plans are firmly in place, and everyone is accounted for.

Some new Local Coordinators have been in the office recently to complete their preliminary training with us. During their time at the office, our new LCs had the opportunity to meet with their dedicated Guardianship Care Manager, who they will work closely with throughout the academic year. It’s important for them to have a good working relationship, so it’s always helpful for them to meet each other at such an early stage.  

The year is going really well at Bright World, with a record number of students placed with host families in the fastest time since the company was founded in 2000. Quicker host family allocations, improved host family availability and our new Host Family Selection Tool have all produced some great feedback from our students. This is all credit to Fi, Leanne and Tammy's hard work, which certainly does not go unnoticed.

New Director of Safeguarding and Operations, Jenny Rumble, has still been working hard to ensure that safeguarding comes before anything else. She has recently been revising our policies, and working closely with Lana to provide our Local Coordinators with everything they need to support our students.   

The team has been busy reviewing what was a brilliant year in terms of new student recruitment and, based on this, setting targets for the year ahead. We hope to see another successful year as more students choose Bright World as their guardian.

It’s probably the busiest time of year for Cory in regard to placements, with new school applications coming in almost daily. Some higher-ranking schools have already moved on to testing applicants, whilst most schools are still busy recruiting for the January, April, and September intakes.   

We were delighted to see Study Travel Magazine announce a new award for 2020, recognising guardianship providers. The new “Guardianship Organisation” award features as part of the brand new Secondary School Awards, which will be presented in April. We would obviously love to win this award, and have been busy trying to secure votes from our partners. Please do vote for us if you haven’t already.

Following our move to .com earlier this summer, we are delighted to announce that our website is now accessible in Russian, Spanish and Chinese via our new language dropdown menu. We are excited to be able to offer more information to parents in their own language and hope that our website can help to answer some of the questions they may have about guardianship and school placements.

Until next time

The Bright World Team