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‘But Ruby was determined that the closed shop was going to be broken. I was not a World Federation Trainer, but I was an experienced trainer. I'd also been involved with the setting up of the Institute of Tourist Guiding in London. By that time, I was the UK expert on the working group for what eventually became the standard for the training qualification of tourist guides in Europe, the European Standard. I'd been involved in setting up SVQs, and NVQs, Scottish or national qualifications in tourist guiding. I was co-opted onto the Board of the World Federation, officially, in 2004 and my job was to look at the training programme. It took some time to sort the issues which revolved around the fact they had too few trainers.
‘Once I became Training Manager in Scotland, my view was, you train trainers. And then it becomes sustainable,’ said Ros. ‘You train trainers in Orkney or Shetland, or wherever it is, because there's not enough money and it’s ridiculous to be sending people all over the place to run training. So, I thought, right, well that’s what we have to do with the world, as well. If you're going to properly set up training around the world, you’ve got to train trainers in the countries around the world. ‘With the help of Titina Loizidou in Cyprus, who was one of the original WFTGA trainers, we set up the Cyprus International Training Centre. And they started running courses, only once a year or so, to train trainers. Once we had more trainers they went out to countries and ran the courses, in-house, in countries around the world. In other words, we used the same system that we had created in Scotland to expand around the world,’ said Ros.
As well as playing a major role in the development of world training, Scottish Blue Badge guides also had a major influence on the body formed to cover Europe. The European Federation of Tourist Guide Associations (FEG) was set up in 1986 in Paris with initially the main purpose to represent tourist guides at the European Commission, as the WFTGA was unable to do so, because the Institutions of the European Union would only take note of and act on the views of a European Organisation.
Some tour operators were trying to use the European Freedom of Movement and Recognition of Qualifications legislation to conflate the two separate professions of Tour Manager and Tourist Guide – often using the term Tour Guide to cover both professions.
The STGA was an active member of FEG from the beginning and was heavily involved in this work.
Ros Newlands was the STGA representative on FEG, before she joined the World Federation Board.
‘I used to go to their meetings a lot because I was heavily involved with the setting up of the standard definition of a tourist guide for the
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