Go-Go Preschool Expands With Full-Day Services in Fredericton
FREDERICTON – Go-Go Preschool, a division of the childcare company that also runs Go-Go Gymnastics, Go-Go After School and Go-Go Events, will offer full-time services in Fredericton starting in September.
The company will enroll 40 students across its two new locations, one each on the South Side and North Side of the city.
Kara Angus, the founder and president of the company, said the decision came after the half-day pilot preschool program received rave reviews from parents. She plans to open three more preschool locations in 2019.
“What we wanted to do was use our after-school programs when they weren’t being used, in the mornings. It was successful. Parents loved it. We had returning clients and that’s why we wanted to go and expand into the full-time venture,” she said.
Opened two years ago, Go-Go Preschool is the latest addition to Go-Go Group Inc. It came after Go-Go Afterschool, which caters to children ages five to 12, proved to be successful among parents.
Go-Go Preschool serves children ages three to four and costs $180 bi-weekly, without additional fees. It uses the same curriculum base as Go-Go Afterschool, which Angus says makes her company innovative.
The curriculum focuses on science, leadership, entrepreneurship, arts and culture, and physical activity. Under new partnerships with local nursing homes, students at Go-Go Preschool will also be able to visit and play with seniors.
Angus said the new preschool facilities are made to cater to that curriculum as well.
Each location will have indoor sandboxes, ball pits, and obstacle courses from Go-Go Gymnastics that can be removed to allow the children to play catch and other activities they typically can’t do inside.
“That’s going to be important when New Brunswick [winter] weather hits,” she said.
Teaching Children To Be Entrepreneurial
At Go-Go Afterschool, Angus partners with Junior Achievement New Brunswick. Through this relationship, children aged five to 12 can learn how to start and run a business twice a year.
“They come up with a product idea, they make it, they deal with supply and inventory and market it. They have a sale and they sell their products, and those funds are donated back to Junior Achievement,” she says. “And the other part of the year, the children can choose a charity.”
Although this Junior Achievement relationship doesn’t yet extend to the preschool, Angus will find other ways to ensure younger children have entrepreneurial skills too.
“As the pre-school is brand new, we’ll need to find ways to do entrepreneurial things with the kids. But the true business building will be implemented when they reach kindergarten,” she said.
The focus on leadership and entrepreneurship is something dear to Angus. In her early 20s, she won a student innovative business plan competition through which she could receive funding for her proposed business. She initially planned to do a PhD in France. But her business took off.
What started as a proposal for a mobile gym called Go-Go Gymnastics became so popular that she rolled out Go-Go Afterschool.
“People were so excited about the idea of mobile gymnastics because we could now go to rural areas in the province that we otherwise couldn’t go to,” she said. “We launched into the full day childcare programs by giving them some elements that we had at Go-Go Gymnastics, but also expanding on leadership, science, arts and culture, and entrepreneurship.”
After that, Angus rolled out Go-Go Events, a carnival for kids that serves corporations and large events like Canada Day celebrations.
Her business model – 50 per cent mobile and 50 per cent bricks and mortar facilities – allowed her to lower her overhead costs and give students access to partners’ facilities.
Today, Go-Go Group’s childcare divisions serve over 600 children ages three to 12 daily, across 21 locations in New Brunswick. Overall, it has more than 100 staff members.
“I’m extremely passionate about teaching children just how awesome New Brunswick is for sharing opportunities. People believed in me when I was really young and I had no idea that at 22 I would have a business and that at 35 I would have a business of this size,” she said. “I had no special gifts behind me. I was just given an opportunity and I took it. If we can give them that opportunity and one of them takes it, this whole thing would be worth it,” she said.
[Entrepreneurship skills] really allow [children] a sense of ownership in a world that’s so protective, we’re so scared and we’re trying to be so safe with them.”
Angus said the growth of her company is thanks to mentors who showed her she can make her own decisions, make her own money, and create a solution instead of wait for something to change. She also credits Go-Go’s successes today to her team members, but she remains focused on the future.
“I want to constantly raise that bar [of childcare in New Brunswick]. I think kids deserve the best and there’s a lot we can constantly do for them when we’re looking after them for so long,” she said.