Car­ol Quash

The ob­jec­tive of an ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion is to fo­cus on holis­tic de­vel­op­ment that lays a foun­da­tion on which chil­dren can build for fu­ture suc­cess­es, aca­d­e­m­ic and oth­er­wise.

Hav­ing an ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tor for a moth­er, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Ay­oung’s Holis­tic Ear­ly Child­hood Cen­tre, Stephen Ay­oung un­der­stands and ap­pre­ci­ates the val­ue of this type of foun­da­tion. The 25-year-old is get­ting ready to lay the ground­work for his first in­take of pre-school­ers, who will be­gin their for­mal ed­u­ca­tion at his in­sti­tu­tion from Sep­tem­ber 8.

Ay­oung told Busi­ness Guardian he had al­ways ad­mired how the pre-school he had at­tend­ed as a child had been run, and it was al­ways his goal that when he be­came old enough, he would open a school of his own. The fact that his stu­dents will oc­cu­py the same rooms in which he learned and race through the same yard in which he played, is just ic­ing on the cake.

“I love chil­dren and I love earn­ing mon­ey, so I de­cid­ed to do some­thing that in­volves both,” he ex­plained. He said he had been try­ing to avoid tak­ing a loan to start, but rais­ing the start-up cap­i­tal had proven to be a bit dif­fi­cult.

“When I start­ed a cloth­ing de­liv­ery ser­vice a few years ago, I was hop­ing I’d make enough mon­ey from it to start the school. But that was a bit slow, and I just de­cid­ed to start it; just earn mon­ey by do­ing my dream, even if it means I have to re­pay a loan ini­tial­ly.” He took the avail­abil­i­ty of the build­ing as a sign that it was time.

He has spent the past few months prepar­ing the build­ing in Trinci­ty for the first in­take – paint­ing, out­fit­ting class­rooms with fur­ni­ture, toys, books, and posters, in­stalling air con­di­tion units, blinds and every­thing nec­es­sary for a com­fort­able, en­gag­ing space for his young charges.

“So far, I’ve in­vest­ed over $50,000. I’ve worked out the bud­get for the day-to-day run­ning of the school, and I have crunched the num­bers for school fees and the fea­si­bil­i­ty of the en­tire project. So far every­thing is on point.”

Ay­oung said the cen­tre will al­so be of­fer­ing day-care ser­vices, and the fur­ni­ture he or­dered for that space is ex­pect­ed to ar­rive in T&T this week. And as things progress, he plans to add an ad­di­tion­al ser­vice; home­work cen­tre.

Ay­oung’s role in the in­sti­tu­tion is one of a more fi­nan­cial na­ture, as he is not cer­ti­fied in ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tion.

He cur­rent­ly works in the ac­count­ing de­part­ment of an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny, and is an un­der­grad­u­ate stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine cam­pus. But he has done his home­work as it re­gards the Ear­ly Child­hood Care and Ed­u­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum, which he dis­closed is cen­tred around five core de­vel­op­men­tal com­po­nents specif­i­cal­ly de­signed for young stu­dents.

“Well­ness, which in­cludes healthy lifestyles, phys­i­cal well-be­ing, and fine mo­tor skills; ef­fec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion, in­clud­ing oral lan­guage, phono­log­i­cal aware­ness, know­ing the al­pha­bet, and ear­ly lit­er­a­cy; in­tel­lec­tu­al em­pow­er­ment which cov­ers cog­ni­tive growth, abil­i­ty to solve prob­lems, num­ber op­er­a­tions, pat­terns, and space; aes­thet­ic ex­pres­sion, un­der which vi­su­al and per­form­ing arts, cre­ative play, and self-ex­pres­sion fall. Then there is cit­i­zen­ship, which fo­cuss­es on emo­tion­al and so­cial de­vel­op­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, con­fi­dence, and team­work.”

Ay­oung’s moth­er Sharon Ay­oung is a cer­ti­fied ear­ly child­hood ed­u­ca­tor and has un­der­tak­en the role of ad­min­is­tra­tive di­rec­tor. And he has em­ployed cer­ti­fied staff to man­age the class­rooms and the day-care fa­cil­i­ty.

“The school is sit­u­at­ed in nice, safe com­mu­ni­ty. The en­vi­ron­ment will be one where chil­dren will learn in a fun way,” with the added ben­e­fit of plen­ty of yard space and fruit trees.

He said the pre-school syl­labus will be an­i­mat­ed – some­thing he knows will cap­ture and keep their at­ten­tion and en­hance their learn­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

“I want them to be cre­ative, I want them to fig­ure out tal­ents from ear­ly, and learn to fol­low their dreams.”

Ay­oung said be­fore the of­fi­cial open­ing in the new aca­d­e­m­ic term, from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 12, Ay­oung’s Holis­tic Ear­ly Child­hood Cen­tre will host a va­ca­tion camp that will fea­ture a dif­fer­ent theme every week: cre­ative, sports and fit­ness, culi­nary, na­ture ex­plo­ration, and wa­ter week.

“We will be bring­ing in pro­fes­sion­als in the dif­fer­ent ar­eas, so there will be paint­ing, cook­ing, swim­ming, danc­ing, field trips, fun and games.”

Ay­oung’s goal is to es­tab­lish his school’s name and rep­u­ta­tion as the best pre-school and day-care in east Trinidad, and even­tu­al­ly open branch­es in oth­er parts of the coun­try.

“The plan is to dom­i­nate child-care in the Trinidad and To­ba­go. By next year I would like to open an­oth­er branch in Port-of-Spain, then in South, Ari­ma, Ch­agua­nas, and con­tin­ue to grow.”