As our fall 2021 season comes to an end, I thought I would take the opportunity to summarize some new developments and lessons learned from the ongoing COVID-19 Pandemic.
Compared to our most recent spring season, the fall 2021 season was significantly more challenging for us. First, a small outbreak in Jiangsu over the summer caused a spate of cancellations and a delay to the start of the season. By October, it appeared that things had settled down, only for new cases to crop up again, this time in North China. Fortunately, most of our remaining programs were in Central and Southern China, and few cancellations were effected. Then, in early November, a handful of cases in Jiangsu resulted in the early termination of two programs already in progress. Another school responded by requesting a change in venue, first to within the home province, then to within the home city. Meanwhile careful planning became necessary to ensure that our staff – who need to move around throughout the season in order to facilitate programs in different locations – remained safe, healthy, and with green health codes.
Despite these challenges, I would still call the fall season a success. Our fall team consisted of 25 staff, most of whom returned from the spring season. We once again decided to hold our pre-season training in Chongming, and facilitated advanced training seminars in high ropes, water safety, first-aid, team-building, and activity facilitation. In addition, we managed to operate 16 programs encompassing 800+ students.
Several of these programs were in new locations that we had introduced to help schools stay closer to campus and avoid the uncertainty that comes with planning trips involving train/air travel. Our Dianshan Lake program in Shanghai is themed around wetlands conservation, and includes cycling, kayaking, service learning, and other activities. Our new Dapeng program in Shenzhen is our first beach-themed location in Guangdong Province, and featurs surfing, beach conservation, and more. For schools in Jiangsu Province, meanwhile, we are now equipped to run programs in 10 different locations (!) in the province, including Suzhou, Changzhou, Wuxi, Yixing, Liyang, Nanjing, Nantong, and Kunshan.
In closing out this post, I would once again like to recognize our amazing staff. The job of an outdoor guide has never been easy, and COVID has only made it more challenging, in every sense. While many of our long-term staff left the industry (and even the country!) at the start of the pandemic, new staff stepped in to fill their shoes. One year later, I would now say that our new core team is just as dedicated, and is rapidly accumulating the knowledge and experience necessary to be effective outdoor educators.
I’d also like to thank our clients for continuing to work with us. It takes courage and comfort with risk to attempt these programs during the pandemic, and we certainly understand that for some schools, it simply isn’t worth the trouble. Still, we believe that these programs have tremendous value for students, and we will continue to faciliate them for schools that feel similarly.
Having accrued more than a year of pandemic experience, I am now quite confident that we can continue to operate at close to full capacity for the foreseeable future. To be sure, locations that require flights are less viable, but fortunately, we have developed enough venues near most of our clients’ campuses that this simply isn’t an issue.
Currently, it looks like the spring 2022 season will be our busiest ever, as new clients compete for dates in our calendar with existing clients, many of whom postponed trips from the fall. We still have some capacity from March to June, and I would encourage you to get in touch if you are potentially interested in having us organize an experiential education program for your students.
