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had a ceilidh for all the guides who helped make the Convention such a success. We bought furniture so badly needed in the Old Town Jail and paid for the automated booking service to be set up. The remainder was ring-fenced to be used for STGA nominated delegates to attend meetings of FEG and WFTGA.’
Mary Kemp Clarke, who was later to become a vice President of the WFTGA, was given the task of summing up the week-long event. In her opinion, three key themes had emerged from the gathering.
• ‘Firstly, responsibility - mine, theirs and yours!’ she said. ‘Responsibility to conduct our mission statement as professional guides in a legally correct way. ‘Responsibility to grasp, understand and celebrate our differences. We explored this in many ways- it was highlighted in every lecture. To understand and care for those positive differences will sustain our profession's viability.‘Responsibility to maintain and preserve our environments - be they natural, urban, rural, vast or the size of a small room.
• The second theme which ran through the Convention was best described as 'the dichotomies,' said Mary. ‘The dichotomy between global and local. The local is at the mercy of the global, unless sustainability is addressed at local, grassroots levels. The dichotomy between affluence and poverty. On this theme, Geoffrey Lipman clearly pointed out that, as guides, we should plant and nurture the idea of a linkage of sustainability as something which eliminates poverty. The dichotomy between economy and conservation were illustrated throughout the week, including by Con Gillen and his dramatic visual presentation of the geological stacks in Orkney, some now held together with cement and metal pins! The dichotomy between the urban and the rural explored through Bill Taylor and Bob Jones' lectures.
• The third theme had been awareness. ‘Awareness brings the necessary balance which is the framework for any sustainable development,’ she said. ‘Perhaps not all of us were entirely sure of what sustainable tourism involved. Well, now I think we're pretty sure that it permeates all aspects of our work as tourist guides,’ added Mary
Towards the end of 2003 Ros Newlands was asked by the then President of the WFTGA, Ruby Roy, from Canada, if she would come on the board, to sort out their training.
‘The World Federation had set up a training programme way back to train guides around the world but really it was going nowhere,’ she said.
‘I remember having one of my conversations with Jane Orde, when we were discussing the WFTGA and everything to do with it. And I said to Jane, I'd love to become a World Federation Trainer, and she said, you can't, and I said, why. And she said, because it's a closed shop, they won't let anyone else in. And I went, oh right, okay, fine, and forgot about it.
‘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
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