Sarah Charles
Managing Director and Founder – her story
In 2009 I was working full time and had 3 children who were 10, 8 and 5 years old. Whilst I could manage to juggle everything in term time, I found that the school holidays were more difficult. The clubs that existed either did not suit all my children or they did not cover the full working day or the full holiday period. Trying to organise my childcare for the 6 week summer holidays in particular was a stressful, logistical exercise that involved a complicated mixture of different clubs for different children, family, friends and taking odd days off to cover the gaps and repay the favours!
I could see that I was not alone in this annual challenge and decided that I was in a good position to do something about it. My day nursery business is based at a private school in the centre of Solihull. This school has fantastic facilities and beautiful grounds but was empty for the duration of the holidays – what a waste!
I approached the school with a business plan to rent their facilities for the school holidays to run my own holiday club. I am very grateful that they listened to me, could see the potential and agreed to work with me and so Fun Fest Holiday Club was born.
It was important for me that my club would:
- Have a relaxed and fun atmosphere associated with holidays.
- Be Ofsted registered and run by experienced, qualified and well-trained staff so that parents would feel reassured that their children are safe.
- Be open for full working days for the duration of the holidays.
- Be affordable for working parents.
This club has been running successfully for 9 years, we regularly run at our capacity of 120 children per day as so many families have become loyal customers.
I employed Ryan as one of our play workers when he was 18 and he came back to work with us every holiday for the duration of his time at university. When he graduated he was keen to work with me to set up and run his own Fun Fest Holiday Club – and so Fun Fest Franchising was born!
Since then, we have opened a network of Fun Fest Holiday Clubs across the country and have expanded our services to include Before & After School Clubs and Children’s Parties.
This team are now using their experience of running Ofsted rated ‘Outstanding’ nurseries to also run the Canopy Children’s Nursery franchise.
I have built a fantastic team of childcare and business professionals to support the network.
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