2021 had marked a return to quasi-normalcy for Keystone Adventures, and moving into 2022, we were hopeful that this trend would continue. Alas, it was not to be, as the pandemic gained a second wind, and government officials responded with new restrictions and rolling lockdowns. In short, spring 2022 was yet another challenging season for us.
Our season officially began in March, with pre-season training in Yangshuo, for new and returning full-time staff. While other companies had cancelled their training activities, we decided to press ahead, so that we could resume running off-campus programs as soon as conditions allowed. Our training was facilitated by our veteran logistics and operations managers, Ancher Xu and Fabien Michaud, joined by our new HR manager, Jacob Winnicott. New staff began by completing a Wilderness First Aid (WFA) course, facilitated by a third party. This was followed by 4 days of intensive internal training in safety and risk-management, soft skills & facilitation, and child safeguarding.
Alas, most of our programs in March and April were cancelled due to severe restrictions in most major cities. Things picked back up in May and June, with programs in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, and Sichuan. Half of these programs took place in new locations, which we had developed to allow our clients to stay close to campus. For a new school in southern Zhejiang, we facilitated a 3-day hiking International Award Program in the Xianju, whose otherworldly sandstone landscapes marvel Zhangjiajie and other more well-known destinations.
With more down-time than anticipated, our senior staff spent spent much of the spring working on long-term projects and fine-tuning our management systems. We rolled out an update to both our internal IT systems and our registration portal, which serves as our interface to schools and trip participants. We introduced a new feature on the portal which enables us to take payments directly from parents, which some of our clients had been pressing us for.
Meanwhile, the rest of our staff remained out in the field, scouting and developing even more new locations close to school campuses. With 2 new locations in Nanjing, we now have 10 (!) different locations in Jiangsu Province, compared to only 1, in the pre-COVID period.
In looking to the future, we are still optimistic. We are almost completely booked for the fall 2022 season, which is a testament to schools’ continued willingness to run off-campus programs, despite extremely challenging conditions. Ultimately, while COVID restrictions have made it impossible to run programs in our preferred way (if at all!), I’ve come to see it as a blessing as a disguise. It’s given us a unique opportunity to step back and think about both the future of experiential education programming, as well as our own long-term development as a company.
By the way, we are agressively recruiting for our fall season, so please get in touch if you’d like to join the best team of experiential educators in China!
