Flying half way round the world from her home in Wuhan, China to London, England - Anna Kong was excited at the prospect of meeting Amanda Frolich for the first time. It was the culmination of a search for the sort of pre-school education that is missing in China. Anna Kong was full of hope when she came across Amanda’s website whilst searching the web and could see that here in the UK, Amanda’s Action Club classes for early years education – meant laying the foundations towards a healthy start for young children.
Anna is like so many of her contemporaries in China, a mother with one child seeking the very best she can afford for her child’s education. She is concerned about the health and well-being of her child. With a proliferation of Western food brands now establishing a presence in China, and a society that is fast getting used to the convenience of modern food and technology, parents in China just like Anna are faced with the growing issue of childhood obesity.
Seeing Amanda teach her Baby and Toddler class in Chiswick Anna could see the joy and wonderment on the children’s faces. Parents were relaxed, happy to see their children enjoy themselves, content in the knowledge that whilst children were having fun, they were in fact learning key skills in readiness for starting school. For the classes were not just good for the physical development of children, helping them to become aware of their bodies and getting fit, Anna could see Amanda’s unique style of teaching could have a dramatic effect on parents and children’s attitude to learning in China.
For Amanda, the visit from Anna Kong, was filled with a sense of destiny, for Amanda had long held the belief that children from all cultures and physical abilities should be encouraged to enjoy physical activities that would enable them to grow in confidence and find joy and happiness in learning new skills.
Soon after Anna’s visit to the UK, Amanda boarded a plane bound for Beijing and then on to Wuhan, a city in China respected for its educational excellence as well as its manufacturing output.
The visit proved a life changing experience for Amanda, for she had witnessed the longing of working mothers to spend more time with their children. In fact, they faced the same dilemma as parents in the UK, for they too were in search of a balanced lifestyle that would enable them to fit in the commitments of work and family life.
Amanda was now filled with a sense of determination to help parents not just here in the UK but now China as well, by providing them with the means to run a fulfilling business that would allow mothers to work flexibly and find the time to be with their children.
The journey to China was fateful for Amanda in many ways, by chance her business and marketing consultant was able to converse in Chinese, which helped smooth out some cultural differences during the visit and helped the negotiations run smoothly; added to this, Amanda had already begun the long process of developing a Franchise to offer mothers in the UK and having completed a successful pilot Franchise scheme was confident that it could deliver a profitable business for many more mothers and was certain of its successful roll-out in the UK.
As Amanda explains, “I’ve always had the feeling that helping children attain early learning goals through physical exercise wouldn’t just be good for children, but it would be good for the parents too. It seems that fate has lent a helping hand: I am overjoyed to have met Anna, she is someone who shares the same vision that I have – she just happens to live in China!”
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