Easter greetings

We wanted to take this opportunity of welcoming all our guardianship students back from their Easter holiday. Apart from a few delayed flights all our students have arrived back safe and sound with no glitches. This is due to the fantastic team of drivers that we have and also Jane Forester and Carol Gill's hard work.

Communication with our students and their parents and agents is vital for the smooth running of our guardianship programme, especially if there are delays or flights change.

Thank you to all our students, parents and agents for their help in making this Easter holiday departure and arrival back a huge success.

We are now gearing up for the summer term, host families in place and all arrangements made.

Happy Easter and here's to a lovely warm summer.

Brittany Wong performs in the Hong Kong Children's Choir

Bright Worlds' close partner agent of Hong Kong Overseas Studies Centre and his wife, Rae are rightly so proud of their daughter, Brittany, they wrote us this blog. Thank you Jimmy and Rae and of course Brittany - we like to keep up to date with all your news!

Jimmy wrote:

Hi Lana, James & Sheena and all at Bright World!
Happy Chinese New Year of the Ox. This is a recent photo of Brittany performing at the Hong Kong Cultural Centre for the Hong Kong Children's Choir. She's part of the HKCC and has done 3 performances so far. I'm so proud when she's on stage wearing her beautiful red dress...

Sheena Trist - Schools Placement Manager talks about her recent trip to Windsor!

I recently attended the British Boarding Schools Workshop which was held at the Beaumont House Conference Centre in Windsor, Berkshire over the weekend of 7-9 November. The workshop was organised by Suzanne and Anthony Rowse of SR Events and, as always, their organisation was impeccable.

At the event were over forty boarding schools and colleges and I managed to have appointments with 21 of them. I got to meet a lot of new schools and so they have now been added to the Bright World portfolio and I hope to be able to suggest these new schools to prospective new students and to start a good working relationship with them.

I also had the opportunity to meet Registrars and Marketing Managers that normally I only deal with by e-mail. It is so much nicer when you can put a face to a name! Also I met several agents that, again, I normally only know via e-mail.

To cap off the weekend, my husband joined me and we went to Wembley Arena to see Queen and Paul Rodgers. A brilliant show and a great end to a very busy weekend.

Carol Gill blogs on about her week at work

The week started well although Lana had just come back from Thailand so it was quite busy. I was expecting a busy week as this weekend is an exeat weekend when lots of our students have to leave school just for two nights so we help them with arrangements and they stay with their host family.

All was sorted out a couple of weeks ago and I was just ready to put the finer points of the week in place when certain students starting to change their minds about what they were going to do! How annoying is that!! It is really embarrassing having to cancel our host families although we do have to pay them if it is that late, but they have all made special plans to host their students. It also takes ages to unravel the work I have already done.

I dont mind too much because I do understand young people - I have four children of my own! I do realise that youngsters have a much better social life than I do!

Anyway all is OK now, everyone is happy and sorted out in the end. I am just off to spend a weekend with my family and leave Lana with the emergency phone!

Jane Forester is off on holiday for a week so I had better gear myself for another busy week next week - I will let you know how it goes - watch this space!!

Carol

Bright World's new Website!!

Hello Lana here. I am so excited today that our new website has been launched. We really like it and we hope you do too. If you are a recognised Bright World Agent or a valued parent you will now have access to our secure zones which we hope you will find useful for reading news items and also referring to important documents.

Watch this space as we will soon have videos available to upload as well!!! I am just working on that!!!

Nearly Christmas - I can hardly wait!

Lanax

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.

Brittany Wong - a budding artist of the future.

Brittany Wong is turned just 5 years old in June 2008 and lives and goes to school in Hong Kong. She is the daughter of Jimmy Wong, the Chief Executive of Hong Kong Overseas Studies Centre, Bright World's No 1 agent for several years running.

We are all very impressed with the art work that has been created by Brittany. This is a self portrait and shows remarkable talent for an artist of her very young age.

We are keeping our eye on Brittany - we think she has a lot of talent and could be a budding artist in the future.

Well done Brittany from the Bright World team.