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Making the move from teaching teenagers to working with babies, toddlers and preschoolers is quite a leap, but Lisa Blondel has embraced the move and all the opportunities she is now helping to deliver through her new role as CEO of Bright Beginnings.
Having started work in September, when we met in November Lisa is clearly settled in and along with her team of staff, parents and many tiny charges, she is looking to 2024 and beyond with big expectations.
"In my background as a secondary school teacher and as an English teacher, my role in the past was teaching English and then I went down the inclusion route," she explained.
"I saw this job advertised and I thought that could be really good. It's in line with what I'm doing, aligned with my values to society and ultimately the children I was working with were children who, had they had a bit more of what Bright Beginnings does at the beginning of their lives, it could have helped them. So, this is about really trying to make a difference at the start of a child's life whereas when they're teenagers and they've already gone through so much and you're trying to really help them with their education then."
Pictured: Lisa Blondel is CEO of Bright Beginnings, and despite being busy with the strategic work in running a charity she also gets to enjoy story time.
Acknowledging that the "age difference is big", Lisa explained how she has previously worked in primary schools, particularly when travelling and working as a supply teacher in Australia.
"It's not really about the age," she said, "even though you're working with children who are teenagers, they still have younger brothers and sisters, which impacts on the whole family set up. So, from an English teaching perspective, yes I do miss doing that and I do miss being with the older children and actually teaching them but in terms of what I was doing from the inclusion perspective, that was much more family based so even though they're teenagers on a day to day basis, to be honest, it's quite nice working with the much younger ones now, and also it's nice though for me because we're now based up here (Delancey) I still see loads of my former students because they're now in college."
Bright Beginnings has three components - a nursery/pre-school, a children's centre and a literacy programme. Lisa is not directly involved with any of those on a day to day basis as her role is strategic with oversight of all three and how each are run, staffing, user numbers, and how the whole charity operates.
As a charity, funding is a key issue and Lisa's role as CEO has been part funded by a grant from the Guernsey Community Foundation and a private donor.
Pictured: Bright Beginnings focuses on the critical first 1001 days of childhood.
With Lisa taking on the strategic role, she is hoping that the charity can not only continue to fulfil its current aims but also help even more children and families.
"It was set up because it links in with the 1001 days agenda. And that is crucial to a child's outcomes in life."
Those 1001 days Lisa mentions are the days from conception to the age of two which are recognised as being a crucial time for brain growth and development.
Bright Beginnings is aligned with other global organisations which also focus on the 1001 days such as the NSPCC.
Helping a parent and child through those first 1001 is about much more than just offering a play area and support explained Lisa.
"The other thing I really like about Bright Beginnings is its literacy program," she said.
"So even though this is very different in the respect of working with early years, in terms of the things that I'm passionate about, which is literacy, for example, and developing that love of language and having literacy skills are crucial for your future outcomes.
"So yes, we've got the children's center, the nursery/preschool and then the literacy program which has been renamed as The Next Chapter.
"Those are our three key areas and in the future we would like to also be doing some maths intervention as well."
Pictured: Reading nooks and quiet spaces make up some of the room at Bright Beginnings, along with a cafe, meeting rooms, a nursery and more.
The literacy programme relies on volunteers who go into schools to simply read with children. A maths programme would work in a similar low key but supportive way.
"...it's not just about academic, it's about social understanding of yourself as well," adds Lisa. "If you don't have the words to describe how you're feeling, then you can't regulate yourself because you can't convey your emotions and you can't understand your own emotions."
Lisa recalls from her time working at the high schools that "a lot of the children that struggle in school are those that haven't got the literacy levels that they need and they haven't necessarily also got the social, emotional, mental health skills that they need, which is to be able to regulate themselves when things get tricky.
"So yes, Bright Beginnings is really helpful across the two key areas that help people - good literacy levels the playing field."
Lisa's time at Bright Beginnings so far has been brief, but the charity itself launched seven years ago.
The children's centre and nursery/preschool were created to fill gaps in provision while also offering new services such as group support sessions for parents and 'mellow play time'.
Pictured: Bright Beginnings offers group sessions as well as the nursery/preschool and literacy programme.
In 2017 when the facility first launched in the former St Sampson's Infants School at Delancey, it was called Bright Beginnings Children's Centre and Bright Beginnings Preschool. With the literacy programme running alongside the two centres.
Now they are all under the one umbrella, with Lisa overseeing all of them.
The facility is clearly constrained by the size of the former infants school with one manager using a former storage cupboard as an office, and corridors portioned off to create reading nooks for the children, their parents and the staff.
A new 'Garden Room' is nearing completion which will offer office space and meeting rooms for the staff across each of the three sections of the charity.
A new website is also on the way to show exactly how the charity works and the three services are integrated.
Lisa said, as the charity's first CEO, she is hoping that by bringing the three components all together in a more focused manner, she can also look at how Bright Beginnings can move forward.
Pictured: Jim Roberts from the Community Foundation which part funded the CEO role at Bright Beginnings, alongside Lisa Blondel.
"Everyone on the board wants to be involved and, and is really involved, which makes my job easier because we're having these discussions. Who's going to be responsible for this and who's going to be responsible for that, and so I'm able to ask those questions and we can plan for the future."
Some of the plans for the future are as simple as encouraging more members of the community to use the cafe at Bright Beginnings, with other plans being the possibility of opening a second centre elsewhere in the island.
"...the cafe is something that I really feel strongly about. It doesn't make any money for the charity, that's not what it's about, it's about the social impact. We have a craft group on a Tuesday afternoon where some volunteers come and they do their knitting and make little hats and things and then they go into the sale. It all just comes together nicely, and we want to do more for dads and we also want to do more where we can to involve more elderly members of the community.
"Theresa who's our centre manager has always said that she would really like to have some sort of satellite of Bright Beginnings because being based here, we're mostly serving this end of the island. We do have people who are coming from all over certainly but in terms of the families who don't have transport, for example, and need to get the buses and so on, coming from St Martin's is tricky so if we had something on their doorstep, that might help another area of the community."
Pictured: Lisa Blondel.
With two months as CEO under her belt, Lisa thinks next year will be taken up with fundraising, networking and recruitment.
"I've been able to learn so much in a really short space of time and from January I think I'm going to have to put quite a bit of my time into the fundraising element as well, and then building up those links with the corporates, with politicians and all those sorts of things and there's no more space to extend out into so we have a few challenges with staffing at the moment in terms of the nursery because there's obviously a childcare recruitment issue and that's affecting nurseries across the whole island, so in terms of my role, there's so many different elements and it's so varied, but it's really good."
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