*COVID-19: We are committed to helping our community through this crisis. To that end, our incredible portfolio companies have many materials and products to assist in this time of need, and we will be promoting them in this series. We’ll get through this together - read on and stay tuned.
This post was written by Pooja Shah, CEO and co-founder of our portfolio company KidzToPros.
Since starting KidzToPros in 2016, my team and I have developed valuable connections with the schools, parents, students, and instructors that we serve in California, New York, and New Jersey. When the number of cases of COVID-19 began to grow exponentially in the U.S., we started seeing first hand the impact on our KidzToPros community.
Beginning the first week of March, with the earliest news of potential school closures, my staff and I started planning and preparing for how we could support our community. In the event of a significant number of school closures, we wanted to address three important questions:
How do we make sure that over 23,000 students from our 310+ partner schools can continue to take part in their after-school enrichment activities?
How do we continue to provide opportunities for more than 200 KidzToPros instructors and teachers so they don’t lose their paychecks?
How do we support families when kids need to stay home and/or parents are working from home?
We made the decision to do whatever it took to move our programs online, allowing our instructors to continue earning their wages and letting families continue to be part of the programs they signed up for.
In just seven days, we built and launched KidzToPros LIVE!
KidzToPros LIVE Online Programs provide:
The opportunity for students to continue taking part in our existing after-school programs, on the same day, at the same time they were already registered.
Ongoing employment for our dedicated KidzToPros teachers, instructors, and coaches. They’re excited to continue working — in real-time, from their home — a job they genuinely love!
A new series of weeklong programs, designed to engage kids in grades K-1, for 3 to 5 hours every day, Monday through Friday. We’ve taken our most popular programs in STEM, Arts and Sports and made them available online with live instructors and small groups of like-minded students.
I’m confident these supplemental enrichment opportunities will ignite students’ creative passions, teach them new skills and keep them moving and active. Parents can take comfort in knowing the time their children are spending at home is fun and enriching.
Parents around the U.S. can now register for our online programs and keep the learning going for their K-8 children. If you buy a KidzToPros LIVE online program, we’re offering $20 off additional registrations. Refer a friend, and both you and your friend get $25 off a program registration.
In addition, beginning March 30th, KidzToPros will begin offering free programs to Title I students. We understand not everyone can afford to register, and given the current situation, we want to make some of our online programs available free of charge to those students.
You can find more information on our programs and register at https://www.kidztopros.com/online-programs.
I know this is an exceptionally challenging time for parents and child caretakers - if you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please don’t hesitate to contact me at pooja.shah@kidztopros.com.
More about KidzToPros
By expanding our learning universe with KidzToPros LIVE, we’re making child enrichment accessible and affordable to every school-going child in America. Our multi-activity programs are taught in real-time by professional instructors to groups of no more than 10 students.
Our online programs offer STEM, Arts, and Sports activities, based on your child's age.
The variety of activities will improve your child's critical thinking skills, spark their creativity, and get them moving! Your child can join the online program from the comforts of your home or anywhere with a wifi or cellular connection, and from a desktop or laptop. We offer varying program start times to accommodate students in all U.S. time zones.
Help spread the word
You are welcome to extend this opportunity to anyone you think would benefit - feel free to share on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.