Our Response to COVID-19

We want to let our schools know that our team is prepared to support you, our school community, in response to COVID-19. We have been closely monitoring the virus, and have been taking proactive steps to mitigate any impact to our customers and employees. We have a business continuity plan to address a number of scenarios that may arise and want to let you know that we are dedicated to working with our schools in need while keeping our employees safe. Internally, we are taking the below measures to ensure there is no interruption to Faria’s products or services:

• We are monitoring each of our 9 global offices and encouraging employees to work from home when possible.
• We are halting all non-essential travel, and handling any essential travel on a case-by-case basis.
• We are assessing employee health before any face to face interactions with our schools.
• We are moving most of our professional development services online and supporting other organisations in their efforts to take planned events virtually.

We have taken steps to support our school community including the following:

• We have regrettably cancelled the OpenApply Admissions Conference in Sofia, scheduled on March 27 & 28. However, we are determined to continue to provide professional development opportunities despite the current situation, and we are planning to host a series of webinars where we can still learn from each other and exchange ideas in an online space. Stay tuned and further details will be coming soon!
• We are collaborating with our users who have experience in crisis communications and school closures to produce informative resources on how to handle communications and admissions during this difficult time.
• We are closely monitoring network usage to ensure that there is no effect on your OpenApply access while more people are working remotely. For our users in China who are working with families outside of China, our Technical Operations team is working to establish multiple proxies in various data centers in China in order to try to improve the flow of network traffic through the Great Firewall.
• We have suspended all physical events, including workshops, professional learning and conferences, until we have a better understanding of the situation. In an effort to support continued learning, we have expanded our work in the virtual arena and are offering online cohorts, online professional development and training along with a larger selection of webinars. Our hope is that we can continue to learn and collaborate with one another as we explore new ways of learning.
• Join us for one of our webinars:
  • Leaders Helping Leaders: A Conversation about Remote Learning
  • Admissions Helping Admissions: A Conversation About Enrollment Strategies
  • Leading Teams Virtually

For any schools not currently using OpenApply who are being affected by the virus, we are offering free access to OpenApply. If interested, please let us know. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to reach out. Our support lines are staffed 24 hours/day, 5 days per week. Thank you for being part of our community. We understand the critical role we play in you and your school, and we are here to support you during this time.