Safety Travel Testimonials

I attended this course with a friend before backpacking around South America for six weeks in summer. I think it's fair to say we were both pretty sceptical beforehand, but the course was both remarkably interesting and extremely useful. I've sat through a couple of health and safety-type courses for other things which were pretty patronising and boring; the Objective Travel course genuinely could not have been more different. We rattled through a whole range of topics, but perhaps the most useful part was chatting with Charlie about our trip specifically, which ended up being a big influence on where we went and what we experienced. I'd strongly recommend the course to anyone travelling in places where safety is a concern; it went a long way to making our trip trouble-free.

Having watched 2 older brothers go off travelling to south east Asia and South America and come back more or less unscathed I didn\\\\\\\'t really feel I needed to do this course and couldn\'t see what more it could offer me other than advice I'd already received plenty of.

This course not only offered invaluable advice on every area, from when you should and shouldn't carry your passport on you to what to do if said passport gets stolen and the necessary precautions to take in the event of that happening.

It also equipped me with the confidence to trust my gut feeling, whether with haggling a bargain or  especially when avoiding tricky situations, whilst Claire helped an impossibly indecisive packer, in her Kit run-though, sort through all the junk to what is really necessary.

All the kit that I bought during the course has been indispensable, but most of all the Aquapure filter water bottle to the extent that I had to ask Charlie to kindly post another one out to Nepal ahead of a trek, to replace the one I left in Australia

I have been meaning to write to the team at Objective Travel ever since I got back from three months travelling in Africa back in 2013.  I had attended your brilliant objective gap safety course in December 2012 but, crucially, my travelling partner had not.  This all came to the fore in March 2013 when we were mugged late in the evening on a street in Durban.  We made several mistakes that evening (all which I was told about on the course)...

the one mistake I made, of course, was not to be more forceful with my companion about the knowledge I had learnt about situations about this. But with the police at the top of the street, he could not understand what the danger was and I was reluctant to get into an argument.

Anyway, the long and the short of it is that I believe we would never have got into trouble if my travelling companion had done the course as well.  Everyone in the travelling party should do the Objective Gap Safety course!

First, Trust is at the heart of our partnership, a real trust, unequivocal. When we hired Objective Travel Safety some 12 years ago, we were looking for a Company that would grow with us, meet our challenges. I wanted the relationship to become sustainable.

Working with journalists is not easy. Eurovision Academy wanted to develop a new concept of a Safety course that would match a journalist’s real life and work. We wanted to help reporters to pursue proper journalism without being killed or injured, without being broken or destroyed by the horror they can face, while coping with stress and keeping their minds sound and calm.

The course was developed around reporters‘ personal workflow: assignment to a trip, preparation, arrival on location, work and coverage of the story. The development of this new course required a lot of work and dedication, which they did with an immense enthusiasm and commitment. Objective identified the key areas for learning, created real scenarios so that the learning would definitely be fused with the own personality of the reporter.

This is how we created HEST, our flagship Safety and Security programme. Since 2004, Objective has been developing and delivering 58 courses for 671 reporters and journalists from 40 countries.

In an increasingly dangerous environment, 671 reporters managed to keep safe while making their stories in risky and hazardous areas all over the world. This is a record which I am particularly proud of.

Reporters are transformed after the course, they better know who they are, they are equipped with a solid toolbox, they know how and what to improve on their behaviour. All 671 reporters, from the young inexperienced ones to the more senior field reporters, praised the course and Objective for what they learnt.

Read this quote in particular:

February 2011- Petr Svidenský, Czech television

Hi Charlie, Hope you're well. I wrote you, because I wanna to THANK YOU for everything you learnt me and of course yours colleagues also. I was filming in Cairo from 28 of january to 4 of february and Im still alive because i follow almost everything I learnt in HEST. It was maybe the most heaviest filming that I came thru, we were in the middle of shooting, we were kidnapped, detained and many other "happy" things. THANK YOU Charlie for your training.

Thank you Objective!

Secondly, a perfect communication pattern and framework has been established between Eurovision Academy and Objective Travel Safety, from the administration, to logistics, marketing and content side. The code of conduct for our common dialogue is solid, informal and direct.

When we discuss a topic we always come up with a mutually satisfactory answer. As a commissioner of the courses, I can always tell them how I feel and provide them with an honest feedback. We have a quality monitoring system. We continuously improve the course through participant’s feedback, commissioner’s debrief and also audit from external experts.

On a business perspective, since 12 years, Objective Travel has been bringing to the table their unique experience and energy that expand and enhance our training services to our clients. Thanks to them, HEST has become the reference course on Safety and Security in Europe and beyond. They prove to be flexible, agile to answer in the best way the requests from our stations.

For Eurovision Academy, it was crucial to make it a success. Academy is the EBU’s corporate training centre. It fully supports the EBU’s strategy by delivering the most relevant courses for Members’ professionals from 73 Television and Radio broadcasters from 56 countries. Providing Public Service media’s professionals with the best course on safety and security was a must.

Thank you Objective!

Thirdly, the skills they bring are unique, varied, always adapted to new situations.  Days are now full of bad and harsh news about security that create anxiety and nervousness among the staff. Objective provides us with the right answers: concrete, balanced, serious and calm.

This is a great team of former senior officers, trainers and operators from the British Special Forces, front-line media professionals, specialists in technical and IT security, medical experts.

A fantastic team obsessed with the quality of the course and its relentlessly open improvement.

They bring expertise into the following areas:

-       Pre deployment : Destination Research,  Documentation, Travel Equipment, Communication

-       Getting started tips/ first in,

-       Personal Safety,

-       Situation awareness, Crime avoidance, Dealing with aggression,

-       Tips for Females journalists

-       Kidnap and Ransom

-       Local Travel

-       Travel & environment Health

-       Emergency First Aid

-       Field Safety

Thank you Objective!

Finally, it is my privilege to make special note of the accomplishments of Objective Travel, Eurovision Academy provider for Safety and Security courses, and I would like to highly recommend them and praise them for their work.

Nathalie Labourdette

Head Eurovision Academy

labourdette@ebu.ch