Hostile Environment Safety Training

HOSTILE ENVIRONMENT SAFETY TRAINING COURSES

Courses are bespoke to meet the needs and requirements of the individual and/or organisation. Whilst they are principally attended by media professionals and NGOs (or businesses working in high-risk areas) we rarely mix the two as their needs and working practices are generally very different. 

Courses will focus on training the individual so they can identify and be aware of the risks at the earliest opportunity in order to take action to avoid or manage that risk so they can undertake the task in hand. Courses are generally a minimum of 2 days residential course and can be as long as 5 days.

For the last 18 years, we have held the Hostile Environment Safety Awareness Training  (HEST/HEAT) contract for the European Broadcast Union (EBU) Academy, delivering 5-day courses. Training media professionals including journalists from all the major European Broadcasters including: ARD, NOS, NRK, RAI, BBC, SR, VRT.

During our HEST courses for journalists, freelance journalists, and reporters, we appreciate the need to ensure the course has a strong journalistic focus. Therefore, one of our instructors is always a journalist. We are fortunate to be supported by Robert Adams, a cameraman with over 25 years of frontline reporting, Eric Feitjen and Peter Ter Velde. Both Eric and Peter have years of experience with Dutch television broadcaster NOS. We have also delivered training courses for Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, Channel 4 and Trinity Mirror Group. 

Download EBU HEST Course Leaflet

The content of each course is flexible

For NGOs, charities, business travellers or church groups, we will focus more on working in the local environment and working with local communities. For the media professionals and media teams, especially in conflict zones, the focus will be managing the risks as a journalist and concentrating on some of the key risks such as the threat from authoritarian regimes through to negotiating checkpoints, mines and IED avoidance.      

Hostile Environment Safety Training (HEST/HEAT)