Meet the FEG Trainer Team
The FEG Trainer Team currently consists of 14 active professional tourist guides with various backgrounds and vast complementary experience. Each FEG Trainer holds a guiding qualification for a specific area, i.e. for Greece, for London, for a specific area in England or for Scotland – some trainers hold more than one guiding qualification for more than one specific area. Collectively their guiding environs extends from remote islands to museums and galleries and seats of parliaments, where they guide on walking tour, on sites and on moving vehicles. As all tourist guides they look after leisure tourists, cruise guests, conference delegates, business travellers and travellers in specialist study tours.
All our FEG Trainers are university graduates with a range of academic qualifications. Before qualifying as tourist guides our FEG Trainers had careers as archaeologist, language teachers, translators, voice overs and project managers for European Programmes. The Team’s roots span from ancient Greece to Argentina via Central Europe and Britain. Between them they deliver training in English, French, Greek, German, Italian, Spanish and Polish and conversational language skills reach across and beyond Europe as far as Turkish, Russian and Creole of the West African state of Guinea-Bissau.
All our FEG Trainers are excellent communicators, multi-taskers and able to think on their feet. Over the years the team members have amassed a vast international experience of training tourist guides and trainers of tourist guides throughout Europe and across the globe, including in Abu Dhabi, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Brunei, China, Crimea, Cyprus, Greece, India, Italy, Jamaica, Malta, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Singapore, Tanzania, UK, Ukraine and others.
Our FEG Trainers are also regular speakers at international conventions and conferences and often deliver practical workshops and seminars in their own countries, during FEG annual meetings and beyond. For instance, a variety of half-day seminars and the 2-day course ‘The Art of Guiding’ were delivered at FEG Meetings in Palma de Mallorca, Oporto, Vienna, Madeira, Dubrovnik, Evora and continue to be offered. Trainers’ activities include selecting, assessing and examining tourist guides and trainers of tourist guides; accrediting courses and moderating exam results; research and report writing. Their work ranges from designing and delivering site guide training courses to international consultancy. All are fully aware of the requirements and standards of professional tourist guide training programmes.
The FEG Training Team includes a Past President of FEG, a co-author of the FEG Quality Charter, founder members of tourist guide organisations, a former co-ordinator of area representatives of the World Federation of Tourist Guides Association (WFTGA), a former Training Manager of a National Tourist Guides Association as well as a current FEG ExCo Member, and Course Directors of national and prestigious site training programmes. Most held or hold positions as Directors of their own tourist guide associations or training bodies, have represented their associations internationally and many have been involved in developing the tourism definitions enshrined in EN13809:2003 and more recently the EN15565:2008 standard for professional tourist guide training programmes. Others have provided international consultancy to governments and tourism organisations on UNWTO, UNESCO, USAID and EU projects.
We would be delighted to bring our knowledge, skills and enthusiasm to you and your colleagues.
On behalf of the ExCo and the Training team
Efi Kalampoukidou
FEG ExCo President
president@feg-touristguides.org
www.feg-touristguides.com
