Photo: Guillermo Zacal, President of ISO Copolco, and Joël Marier, Vice president of EBI Consulting, at the 41st annual ISO/COPOLCO Plenary meeting in Zimbabwe, May 2019
In developing an international standard, there are three phases – first, getting the ISO community to recognize the need for a new standard; second, crafting a roadmap on how we will develop the standard; and third, drafting and getting the standard approved. This does not happen in a vacuum – 164 countries confer and have to reach a consensus, involving a large range of stakeholders (industry, government, consumers, etc.)
The first phase was completed in May 2019, with the ISO COPOLCO plenary adopting the motion at its meeting in Zimbabwe. Since receiving the green light there, we have assembled a committee of experts to advance into the second phase.
EBI vice president Joël Marier is leading a task group of six national standards bureaux (from Germany, France, Japan, India, Trinidad & Tobago and Canada) working on this project to identify industry experts in the fields of education, risk management, and tourism who have helped craft the terms of reference clarifying how this standard will be developed. We have now started consulting the member countries of ISO COPOLCO to get their approval of this document.
As part of this consultation phase ISO COPOLCO is seeking approval of the roadmap and has asked the member countries, “Can you share any information about national practices, guidelines and methodologies for managing risk for youth and school field trips in your country?” With this, we hope to gather the best practices from around the globe to augment the work to date.
As well, at the annual meeting of the World Youth Student Travel Conference held in Lisbon in October, Joël Marier was elected to the travel safety panel of the World Youth Student Education Travel Confederation. His input on the panel will help us continue to build support in the international youth and student travel community.
As we work our way through this lengthy process, we are reminded of why we are doing this: preventable tragedies are unfortunately frequent around the world. In Canada, a teacher has recently been ordered to stand trial after he oversaw a 2017 school trip that resulted in the drowning death of a student. We hope with this standard to avert any other such tragedies from occurring in years to come.
The EBI team has developed an expertise in youth tourism and student travel over the years and is now applying this knowledge to help organizations (through conducting audits and developing policies) to mitigate risk.
For more information, please contact us at joel.marier@ebiconsulting.ca.
