A Co Tyrone woman who turned her passion for teaching young children into a successful business venture during lockdown has spoken of her pride at making a difference to parents and families.
Primary school teacher Ashley Lynch decided to launch "Little Learners" during the pandemic with the help and support of her husband and friends.
Little Learners helps to design and create educational folders for parents to help their children with their education.
Ashley said she first started to get the idea for the business as she was trying to help her own son.
"My son didn’t make it to pre, pre-school and I wanted to enhance his educational journey. As a teacher myself I didn’t want him to fall behind, so I started to create folders and activity sheets for him, my nieces and nephews," Ashley said.
“Then friends wanted them for their kids. They then said – you could sell these and with a push from my husband, he said give it a try, we went for it and the rest is history.”
“I had a mum contact me in Mid-Ulster whose child was non-verbal. She bought an introductory pack to see if it would be of any use and the child started saying the words.
“She then contacted me and ordered one of everything I have so that was very overwhelming and great that it was making a difference to someone and that the business is continually growing thanks to the Go For It programme.”
Leading up to the launch of her business, the mum of three said she was apprehensive, but sought help from the local council's Go For It programme and Strabane Enterprise Agency.
Ashley added: “The Go For It programme gave me an outline to follow making it clear these are the hurdles you have to jump through to make your business successful.
“The business plan that Go For It set up for me allowed me the opportunity to gather my thoughts more coherently so I had the idea on paper and turning it into a business was quite a challenge and something I wouldn’t be able to do on my own.
“Orla from Strabane Enterprise Agency helped me with this by answering questions such as how to nail my niche , is there a market there, how to target them and legal aspects which you don’t actually consider until you begin a business.
Ashley said the nerves were real on the day of her launch, but luckily the orders kept coming in and she has been delighted with the response ever since.
“When it finally came to launch day, I was a bit stressed thinking will anyone actually order or will anything come from it," she said.
"I launched at 10am and I received my first order at 10.03am and it was just ping, ping, ping all day. Obviously, parents were calling out for help whilst home schooling.”
