Ten students, supported by funds raised from the WiT Charity Auction of 2019, finally started their classes in January this year at the Sumba Hospitality School.
After some months of closure, due to Covid, the school reopened on January 15. The 10 students – Tuti, Karel, Listo, Paskal, Vinia, Aris, Libertin, Diana, Satni, and Arden – are part of a 50-strong cohort for this year’s enrolment.
What is WIT?
WIT (Web In Travel) is a community for anyone passionate about travel technology, distribution, and marketing. This basically means if you love to travel, and if you are a bit of a technology freak in terms of wanting to understand how technology is changing travel, you should get to know WIT.
They provide news through webintravel.com and social feeds and run events that are strong in content and different in style and delivery. They launched their first event in 2005. Now they have been spreading learning through events in Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, Japan, Australia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. All this with one purpose: take your mind to new places so accelerate travel innovation through partnerships.
We are very happy to have WIT as a loyal partner. The money raised for these sponsorships makes a real impact on our foundation and on Sumba in general.
Welcome support in times of Covid
It won’t come as a surprise that Covid-19 has had a big impact on the Sumba Hospitality Foundation.
Our founder Inge De Lathauwer explains: “We sent all students home for four months last year (from April till July). Normally our school year was July 2019 till the end of May 2020 followed by a six-month internship. We had to extend the school year from August till the end of November to get all students back up to the standard before going on internship. This resulted in higher operating costs as we needed to keep all staff onboard even without students and hotel guests, as it was uncertain when we could reopen. We had to close our training hotel Maringi for a few months, which normally provides us some income. In these challenging times, we are grateful to have the loyal support of our valued partners, like WIT. Because of them, we can keep changing lives in Sumba.”
The current cohort of students will be in school till the end of November. From December to the end of May, they will do a six-month internship in either Sumba or Bali. This means they will finish their education in May 2022 and the graduation ceremony is planned for November 2022.
Inge continues: “We have established loyal partnerships with high-end hotels and restaurants and our students are wanted in the job market. We managed, even in these challenging Covid times, to find 60 internships (Kempinski, Grand Hyatt, Belmond, Nihi Sumba, Locavore, Aperitif) for our Batch 4 in November 2020. We hope that when these Batch 5 students graduate in May 2022, the situation will be much better. People will continue to travel, we have plenty of reason to stay positive.”
Thank you WIT for your ongoing support.
Sponsor a student!
At Sumba Hospitality Foundation dreams come true. Your support makes that possible. Interested in sponsoring a student or different partnership possibilities, have look at how you can get involved or contact us.
