Volunteer, Service and Hospitality: A proposition for Travel Supporters

I often attend seminars for tour guides and travel supporters. These
seminars are held to brush up our skills and ideas. January and February
are the off-season months, so many seminars are held with themes such as
how we should see and explain the characteristics of Japanese Gardens,
inviting a professor from a university, or Japanese Farm Products; the
background of how they are delivered to the consumers, etc.  All of the
seminars are very interesting and give a lot of knowledge and skills useful
for work.

Listening very hard !

Yesterday I attended a seminar for travel supporters to exchange
information on our experiences: what type of tours we helped with, what
type of disabilities our customers had, what our customers wanted to do,
what they were pleased with, and what they didn't like. We also discussed
what was difficult for the supporters physically and mentally. Many of the
33 participants spoke about their recent experiences and impressions.

They had various experiences. One of the male supporters attended a
customer in a wheelchair to Dubai. There was no lift car there, so he and a
tour conductor had to lift the customer up into the four-wheel-drive car
and the customer could enjoy the drive across the vast desert. Another
supporter said that he attended a customer with ALS lying on a reclining
wheelchair. There were many difficulties for the supporter to cope with: in
order to communicate with the customer they had to use a transparent
plastic sheet with Japanese alphabets, and when the customer moved his eye,
the supporter watched the movement of his eye from the other side to try to
work out what he wanted to do. I've never used this sheet before, but I can
easily imagine how difficult it is to communicate well. And the reclining
wheelchair occupies a lot of space, especially on the corner of a narrow
path, turning around is difficult. But still, the customer enjoyed walking
on the stone-paved road of the street of the town in Eastern Europe. I
explained my experience of attending a lady in a wheelchair going on the
'Shikoku Pilgrimage', where there are many temples with a lot of stone
stairs. I will write about this pilgrimage in the next blog in detail.

We exchanged a lot of information of how people could enjoy their trips,
even though they have a certain disability.

Last but not least, our instructor's summing-up was very impressive. She
says we travel supporters, when we attend our customers, have to remember
the following three words: Volunteer, Service and Hospitality. We
supporters are sometimes paid and sometimes are not paid. Whether we are
paid or not, when we feel like doing something voluntarily for the people
with disabilities to share the time together, we can be volunteers, and
when we provide what our customers want to get, we can offer a good
service. And when these voluntary deeds and services are wrapped up with
hospitality, our support will have some significance. I will remember these
three words, Volunteer, Service and Hospitality, whenever I attend people
with disabilities.