Jeka Play -Innovative nursery furniture

Aim

To bring to the EY sector an innovative piece of furniture that enables the set up of home based, mobile or pack away nursery businesses.

                       The story of

Enjoy EY founded by Anneka Russell is the small company that birthed the idea of the JEKA pack n play shelf.

             Anneka Russell- Founder of Enjoy EY and Inventor of Jeka Pack n Play shelf

The consultancy services provided at Enjoy EY involve working with passionate early educators and nursery owners across the early years sector to improve all nurseries, but particularly those that serve the most deprived communities across the UK. 

The team’s goal is to eventually extend this support to the wider world to ensure that all educational provision for the 0-5 age group offers the best quality learning environment to all children. 

Enjoy EY's team  is currently works with a team of several freelancers and skilled volunteers who provide their expertise to each consultancy project or bespoke handmade item created.

About the inventor

Since August 2017 Anneka has worked diligently to make the idea of the Jeka shelf become a reality. Having received CAD designs of the JEKA shelf the next stage is to raise funds to create a workable prototype to enable the JEKA shelf to be manufactured.          

Anneka has worked in early years education for over 20 years in a variety of roles, including as a Primary Teacher, Early Year's Inspector and Local Authority Early Years Adviser. Currently working Freelance as a Consultant. After having her 1st child, Anneka became a Childminder to enable her to be a flexible working mum. Finding it challenging to balance providing high quality home-based provision to children in her care, as well as a place to call home for her daughter, the idea of JEKA was born.

What makes the JEKA shelf unique?

Whilst all other items by Jeka by hand have been hand made, JEKA Play is the first designed and prototyped product that will soon be ready for manufacture and the vision is huge! 

JEKA Play is unique because it is more than just a shelf! Its thoughtful design brings with it the opportunity for people to build their own high quality mobile creche, pack away nursery or home based business. This is not to mention that the JEKA shelf has been specially designed in a modular way that enables it to be uniquely tailored, 'dressed' and resourced to support all areas of the early years curriculum.

The problems we are trying to solve

It is not only children's development that will benefit from the expertly designed shelves, small nursery budgets, the environment and staff well-being will too.  JEKA shelves are a valuable, long-term investment, designed to enable staff to set up their play room in half the time! Jeka shelves require minimum storage space so they are perfect for those tiny storage cupboards. In addition, each shelf is made from high quality, easy to wipe wood, to withstand many hands over a long period of time.  

So quite simply a JEKA shelf will:

-Open, set into position and easily pack away thanks to its innovate design

-Provide a canvas for creating interchangeable and inspiring invitations to play

-Reduce the time, effort and people power needed for the daily set up of pack away nurseries 

-Make your nursery or play group stand out

- Reduce the need for bulky hard to store nursery furniture

- Provide a natural wood and environmentally friendly alternative to nursery furniture

- Provide a cost-effective solution for nurseries with low budgets

What's in the Name?

The name is inspired by two things, the first initials of Anneka's little family, Daughters Jadzia and Ezri, and Parents Kerry and Anneka but also Anneka's nick name Neka.

Why support JEKA

The ever changing challenges and pressures on the early years sector has meant that many nurseries across the UK have faced closure. This has inevitably resulted in decreased nursery places. Many of these well established nurseries who in some cases operate from church, community or scout halls are often the pillars in their communities serving many disadvantaged families.  JEKA Play intends on providing a cost effective solution in the form of mobile and easy to store nursery furniture that will enable nurseries, childminders or toddler groups to easily start-up their businesses and provide high quality nursery provision.

We’ve received lots of messages of excitement and enthusiasm from educators and professionals within the early years sector, parents and lots of mummies interested in being involved in starting local toddler groups and stay n play sessions.

Here are some of the things people are saying:

‘Am looking forward to seeing this product when you release it to the world’

‘A focus on us hard working and often forgotten pack away nurseries is well over due. Thank you so much and count me in as a member of the JEKA community’

‘Getting everything in and out of our tiny storage cupboard daily, is like playing Tetris. Look forward to an easier way’.

'I have wanted to start up a stay n play session for years and this sounds great, please keep me updated'

The responses have affirmed our belief that local communities are ready for this

What will the funds be used for?

All money raised will be used for two things:

1) To complete the last phase of the project which is to create a prototype so the shelf can be tested by Innovate-design engineers before manufacture.

2) To cover business set up costs including the launch events and legal costs

Why the mystery, what does the JEKA shelf look like?

We are currently going through the patent process so we are unable to share precise images and further descriptions of the JEKA shelf until we receive an update from the IP office which should hopefully be early January. However, if you come along to our soft launch which we anticipate to be at the end of January you will be able to see the CAD design boards which will detail everything.

Membership and volunteering

In the future we want to build a JEKA Community Hub. The purpose will be to share ‘EurJeka’ ideas and best early years practice by developing forums, pop up stay n play groups, workshops and events wherever they are most needed around the UK. To help us build this community we are offering a discount of 10% on all Jeka products and priority booking at events to the first 250 people to pledge £10 or more.

This project successfully funded on 18th December 2019