Page 11 - StudyTravel Magazine July/August 2021 Issue

eduCAtor Q&A Agents on...

SUSTAINABIlITY
Industry speAKs ENVIRONMENTAl

This issue, robin Adams, President of iAlc,
talks to us about virtual roadshows, new roles Gabriela Ardito,
within the association and plans for a face- VCE International
to-face conference in 2022. www.vce-
international.com,
Argentina

“A high percentage of our language
students are millennials/centenni-
als – concerned about social causes
such as unemployment, poverty
or climate change – who value the
social innovation eff orts of com-
panies and weigh the actions that
www.ialc.org contribute to sustainable develop-
info@ialc.org ment in all its forms. Therefore,
when having to choose a company,
Number of members: 141 they opt for one that is committed
Types of members: worldwide language schools to the same causes. We have seen
this as an opportunity to innovate
our programs and introduce chang-
What impact has the pandemic had on IAlC’s membership? es to our industry.”
There is no doubt that the pandemic has hit our members hard. However,
innovation often occurs in times of diffi culty. Many of our schools have cre-
ated and developed interesting online programmes, as well as trained their Oscar Porras,
teachers to handle the complexities of hybrid classrooms. This will then ena- Midleton
ble our schools to off er agents and students more fl exibility in the future. In School www.
the same way we had to also move online. Our Virtual Workshop last year was midletonschool.com, Spain
extremely successful, as were the destination-specifi c virtual roadshows
that we organised in collaboration with our agency association partners and “I think that everything has
Edvisor. We will be organising more virtual roadshows in the coming months. changed so much after the pan-
Unfortunately, we did lose a number of our schools. However, 90 per cent of demic that we need to sit down and
members retained their membership. think what is happening around us.
I think that these initiatives are
What other support has it provided to members? really important and we have to
As our members have been unable to travel overseas to visit agencies, we show that we really care about our
have created the roles of in-market sales and marketing representatives. We planet. A few years ago we decided
currently have reps in Brazil, Latin America and Japan and who have helped to stop printing documents. It
introduce our schools to new markets. didn’t make any sense once we had
a new software and we just have to
What else has the association been working on? copy and paste it there. It is more
We’ve launched digital media campaigns in Latin America, Japan and China accessible for everybody and we
and are creating new campaigns for the USA and Brazil. We partnered with reduce the amount of paper and ink
Edvisor to update the IALC website with a quote engine generator and are used. We now operate paperless.”
planning a face-to-face IALC Workshop in Berlin for April 1-3 2022.
Read more at: https://studytravel.
Read more at: https://studytravel.network/magazine/issues/813 network/magazine/industry-issues

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