✺ How we train
What we ask of you, and what we promise you
The programme is not a favour, nor just another course. It is a two-sided agreement, written down before the first class. Here it is, in full.
An agreement, not a favour
When training is free, it is easy to read it as a gift. It is not. It is an agreement between two parties, and both have obligations.
The programme's code of conduct puts it that way: five commitments from the student, five from the foundation, four house rules and three ways of measuring whether it was kept. No point is decorative. Each one exists because, without it, something concrete fails.
What we ask of you
Take part and keep to the schedule
- Be at the sessions and arrive on time. Punctuality is the first thing an employer measures, and the first thing we teach.
A professional, respectful attitude
- Towards trainers, fellow students and partner companies. In a kitchen or at a front desk, how you treat people is part of the trade.
Invest in your own development
- We provide the programme; you provide the effort. Nobody learns fifty cocktails by osmosis.
Respect the values and the rules
- The rules are further down. There are few of them and they are clear.
Pursue your dream and set an example
- The last commitment is the most ambitious: that your path serves other young people in the town who come after you.
What we promise you
Quality training, by practising professionals
- The person who teaches is the person who does the job: a chef teaches cooking, a head waiter teaches service.
Personalised support
- Groups of no more than 12, one-to-one sessions on your life project and someone on the team who follows your case during the internship.
A safe, inclusive and stimulating environment
- No violence, no discrimination, no humiliation. It applies to everyone, starting with us.
Contacts with employers
- More than 15 partner companies, real internships and a graduation attended by the people who hire.
Follow-up after you graduate
- Six months of placement support, with meetings at 6 and 12 months. We do not disappear on diploma day.
House rules
Four of them, and they apply just as much at Sienna Village as at the company where you do your internship.
Attendance
- Absences must be justified. Without justification, they count.
Respect
- No violent, discriminatory or disrespectful behaviour is tolerated. None.
Appearance
- Appropriate dress in class and on the internship. In tourism, how you present yourself is part of the service.
Confidentiality
- What you learn about the foundation and your fellow students stays inside.
How we will know it was kept
An agreement without measurement is an intention. The code sets three measures: your performance throughout the training, the results at the end, meaning jobs secured and personal goals achieved, and the partner companies' opinion of how you worked with them.
Those three measures judge us too. If a whole cohort fails to find work, the problem is not the cohort.
Why it is written down
We could leave all of this to a welcome speech. We write it down for two reasons.
First, so that you know exactly what to expect before committing twelve weeks. Second, because a written agreement protects the party with less power, which in any training is always the student. If the foundation does not keep its side, you have the text to hold it to.
Together, we build dreams, one step at a time.
That sentence closes the code of conduct. Everything above is what makes it possible.