James Foster attends the Alphe Education Workshop in St Petersburg

The view from the Astoria Hotel, the venue for the Alphe Education Workshop held last weekend in St Petersburg.




James met many of our existing education agent partners who were all very pleased with the service that Bright World Guardianships has provided this year to our students.

James also met several new agencies and was proud to inform them of our Guardianship Service. He was also pleased to be able to demonstrate online our new Parent Portal that has revolutionised the way we communicate with our parents regarding the progress of their child. For them it is our own private Facebook page onto their pastoral life at school including a brilliant photo gallery keeping parents in touch with what is going on.

The next entry on the Portal will be our Host Family Care Plans - produced each time a student stays with a host family for the first time and to ensure our Child Protection procedures are followed to the letter.

Get In Touch!

As we grow, we've found that people are using a variety of ways to contact us and keep up to date with our news. So we're making the most of the internet, and sharing our news with you!

For Twitter fans, become a Bright World "Tweep" and follow us on @brightworldnews

If Facebook's more your thing, come and visit our Facebook Page - but dont forget to LIKE our page or you won't receive all our updates and news!

Or our main website page www.brightworld.co.uk is always a great place to read up on what we're up to. Here you can do so many things - fill in an online application form for Guardianship services, apply to become a Bright World host family, or just Contact us simply to find out more about us!

We are always glad to hear feedback so please pay us a visit online and send us a message!

Bright World welcomes a new member to our team

Bright World Guardianships is so pleased to welcome a new member to their team. Tammy Lindsay joined us on Monday 16th May and is already working hard with her colleagues in the guardianship team. As Guardianship Care Manager, Tammy is already helping to sort out all our guardianship students for their forthcoming half term holiday where they will stay with local host families or fly home to Mum and Dad.

Tammy is also already busy planning next academic year as well as we are predicting another increase in student numbers for September.

Happy Half term to all our students and host families

The first wave of our guardian students who have a two week half term broke up last Friday. The second wave will be going during this week and most break up on Friday this week. We wish all our students who are flying home a lovely week at home and a safe journey.

All those staying here, we hope you enjoy the comforts of your host family and home cooking. For those who are going to their Bright World Host Family for the very first time, we hope you enjoy it. Of course, it will be strange the first time but we plan for you to stay with this family every time you have a school break and you don't go home so the idea is that gradually it really does become your home from home and you actually look forward to going there!

Thank you to all our lovely host families who take such good care of our guardianship students.

First Class Guardianship Service

Sign in here for a first class guardianship experience. No queuing, your application will be processed immediately.

New for 2010 - guardianship now available in Bristol, Bath, Gloucestershire and Worcestershire.

Dont forget guardianship still available in:

Sussex
Kent
Surrey
London
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire
Cambridgeshire
Bedfordshire
Oxfordshire
Wiltshire
Dorset
Devon
Somerset
Norfolk
Suffolk
York


use our online application form http://www.brightworld.co.uk/guardianship/apply.asp

Congratulations to Sarah & Adam Forsyth on the birth of Molly Isla

Our guardianship students, families and clients in West Surrey area will all know and love Sarah. Sarah has been our Local Coordinator and Bright World Buddy to students at Priors Field School, King Edwards School, Witley and Royal School, Haslemere for two years now.

Sarah is currently at home with her new born baby, Molly Isla pictured here with Sarah, her husband, Adam and two sisters Ava and Isobelle. We love the picture so much we just had to share it.

Congratulations to you all.

Local Coordinator's Summer Meeting

The Bright World Guardianships Head Office and Local Coordinator Team June 2009

At the end of June each year once all our students are safely on their way home or just about to leave, the Bright World Guardianships team, in its entirety, get together for a review of the year past.


This helps us to review how we are doing things together and makes us all feel much more part of a team.

This year was the busiest year yet with over 20 of us at the meeting. We were welcoming several new members of the team for the first time:

• Ellie Wood, Local Coordintator for Yorkshire


• Astrid Martin, Local Coordinator for Hertfordshire


• Sandra Clarke, Local Coordinator for Essex
  

We all agreed that the year has been very successful with very few problems. We all enjoyed a buffet lunch afterwards before heading home for a long summer ahead.

Summer days at Bright World

We hope all our students are having a good summer back in their home country with their parents. Life certainly changes here at Bright World in the summer. The windows are open all day (when it is not pouring with rain) and we are busy getting readying for the next academic year, enrolling new host families to take care of our newly arriving students, answering nervous emails from new parents and students in an attempt to reassure them that all be in place by the time the summer term starts.

It is really a different time of year and we do enjoy it. That is not to say we are not looking forward to seeing all our students back in September.

We are still chasing nearly all our students for flight details - please hurry and give them to us as soon as possible. Our drivers get really booked up at the beginning of term and it does help for us to be able to book your airport transfers as soon as possible.

Have a lovely August, and looking forward to seeing you all again in September.

The Bright World Guardianships Team

Bright World lowers deposit for guardianship students

The Directors of Bright World, have today made a decision to lower the initial disbursments deposit for our guardianship clients to just £1,000.

We had set the disbursments deposit, which is used for paying host family fees and transportation, at £2,000 as for some students who do not go home at half term and use our transport service this is actually what they will spend in one year.
By only asking for one amount this saves us time.
However, we appreciate that an outlay of £2,000 as well as the guardianship fees and of course school fees may be too much for some people and also sometimes it is excessive as some students go home at half terms so dont use our host family service.

We hope that this news will be welcomed by our clients.

click here to see a full summary of our fees

New Online Booking system for Guardianships

Bright World Guardianships
new and easy online booking form now available

We are very pleased to let you know that you and parents can now book online for Bright World Guardianships. We hope this will make life very much easier for you all round. There is a section to tell us that you are the agent for the student so there is no danger of leaving you out of the loop.

Click here to try it out.....

First Term News

The gap in our blogs shows just how busy the Bright World Team has been since the start of term. I can hardly believe that all students arrived well over a month ago and already they are on half term this week and next, all safely with their host families or going home to see their families back home.

We are already making plans for all of our students' return at Christmas. Sometimes I think that people don't think there is much to this guardianship job but I can tell you that Jane, Carol and I have been flat out here in the office taking care of our guardianship programme and students.

In addition to that our Local Coordinators have been busy visiting all the students and are now poised to visit them all at half term where they are in new host families.

We do, however, feel that what we do is worthwhile as we have had some lovely comments from our students, parents and our overseas agents as to what a great job we are doing so although it is a hard and challenging job it is a very rewarding one.