Program Concept:
Tourism Education Program, "Smile" idea falls in line with SCTA's efforts to enroot tourism culture in community with particular focus on school students in different educational levels. It also aims at drawing attention on interaction between the two key parties of tourism's entire process (guest and host) through various activities as well as the two parties' strict commitment at the duties and rules that govern conduct of both sides.
Objectives:
The program in collaboration with educational different levels aims at:
- Strengthen the national affiliation and loyalty by paying attention to the importance of national pride, tourism potentials, aspects of civilization, and historic landmarks in the Kingdom as well as working persistently for their preservation.
- To deepen tourism culture amongst young people, in order to encourage youth to joint tourism jobs.
- Promoting principles of respect, understanding and acceptance of others.
Targeted Community:
The program targets the school community represented in public, (students and teachers) and private educational sectors across the Kingdom.
The target groups are:
· Student
· Teacher
· Student and teacher families
Why the school community?
The school community has been selected as an incubator of the program for several reasons reflected as follows:
· As a disciplined community regarding (regularity of educational process), and its ability for interaction, acceptance, rectification and adaptation.
· As an educational environment whose most important objective is to transfer knowledge, promote and guide behaviors of the education community.
· Overlap of educational community with other segments of society and its impact on other institutions.
· achieve geographical and social diversity
· Ease of application and flexibility of time (i.e. entire educational process streams through specific matrix, beginning and ending with fixed date and time).
· Existence of proper environment and operational framework for implementation (educational programs, activities, visits).
· various extra-curricular activities including visits, trips and summer programs could be designed and implemented in proper away that serves both tourism and education objectives.
Program Implementation:
The cooperation agreement between SCTA and the Ministry of Education, which was signed on 11/04/2004, is the beginning of the implementation of the Tourism Education Program “Smile”. The project team has developed an action plan in 2 phases. The first phase included training of trainers and teachers, and the second phase is the stage of training students in middle and secondary schools.
Trainers Training Period:
The project’s team envisages the program implementation plan for this phase by identifying the training schedule and the criteria for the nomination of educators after the evaluation of candidates. Figure (1) illustrates the steps to implement the training program for trainers.
Program execution steps:
Training of teachers:
In this phase, 65 educators were trained, who had been nominated by the Ministry of Education from all the provinces in the Kingdom. The trainers were selected from 42 educational institutions to train the teachers, who will in turn train the students in this program. The teachers have been selected upon their previous experience in the field of training in student activities. The decision of nomination of the trainers was assigned to the administrators of education programs, training supervisors, activity supervisor, and activity leaders.
51,000 students training stage:
In this phase, intermediate and secondary schools students (boys) were trained from across the Kingdom. The selected students were the most disciplined and an interactive social group upon their possible impact on other society groups and institutions.
The program in its first year, academic year 2006–2007, has implemented 1700 training courses comprising 30 students in each session. The total of trained students according to the plan has reached 51,000 representing educational institutions from across the Kingdom which reach 42 institutions.
Also 1700 tours were organized by the program to a number of archaeological and tourism sites to the Kingdom's different provinces.
Training Phase of 100,000 Students:
The program trained 100,000 students from across the Kingdom during the second semester of the academic year 2007-2008 and the first semester of the academic year 2008-2009. The second phase of “Smile” program was inaugurated on Tuesday, May 6, 2008, in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, represented by Al Ahsa Directorate of Education (Boys).
By the end of the academic year 2008-2009 the program is scheduled to train 100,000 students.
Details of training courses:
- The numbers of training courses held in this phase are 3340.
- Number of tourism trips 3340.
- Number of coordinators 42.
- Numbers of trainers were 1260 teachers.
- Numbers of schools 1823, middle and secondary schools.
The third phase, 2009 (female and male students training):
112.000 students, female and male, were trained during second school term, 2008-2009, 112 secondary school students attended the training courses from all over the Kingdom.
The fourth phase, 2010 (female and male students training):
100.000 secondary school students, female and male, were trained from across the Kingdom. Total of students that have been trained by the program were 362.000.
Ulysses Award 2008 of Tourism Creativity:
“Smile” program won the Ulysses Award 2008 for Tourism Creativity. The award is granted by World Tourism Organization (WTO) in Madrid, Spain. This award is given for leading projects being implemented by the government tourism authorities, tourism enterprises, and non-profit organizations for their excellence in contributions to support tourism organization and other related fields, such as environment and society in general. The Ulysses award is also given in recognition of innovation and employment of knowledge in the organization of tourism, as well as to outstanding researchers for their outstanding contributions to the knowledge of tourism.
The areas Ulysses Award 2008 are:
- For the leading contributions in raising the awareness and knowledge of tourism.
- For creative tourism projects implemented by governments as public sectors in partnership with private sectors.
- For tourism innovation projects carried out by the tourism business.
- For creative tourism projects implemented by non-profit organizations (non-governmental institutions and social institutions).