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New
website for children promises dotcom dosh for Great Ormond Street
Hospital
A new website
for parents and carers of pre-school children goes online today
(Monday 26 June 2000), offering the largest source of child health
information available in the UK, and selling baby equipment and
products, in partnership with Great Ormond Street Hospital’s
Children’s Charity. Smallfolk.com provides parents and carers
with on-line access to expert childcare advice and guidance on education,
health, psychology and psychiatry for children in their formative
years (0-5 years). The website can also offer practical help, such
as finding local nurseries and child-friendly places of interest
or identifying useful National and International child-related institutions.
Smallfolk.com also provides on-line forums for people to meet and
discuss child related issues. Online sales of products from toys
to toiletries for the under-fives will help to raise funds for the
Hospital. For every £1 spent on products, Smallfolk.com will donate
5p to the Hospital’s Children’s Charity and the exclusive
partnership promises to yield up to £50,000 in the first two years
for the Hospital’s work with sick children. Co-founder Ilesh
Kotecha, said, ‘As a single parent working long hours in the
City, I found it hard to find reliable and readily available childcare
information, so the idea of SmallFolk.com was born out of need.
Great Ormond Street Hospital was the ideal partner. They provide
high quality information and also enable us to help support sick
children and their families in the process.’ Initially, Smallfolk.com
is being launched for the UK parenting community, but within a year
it plans to be a multi-lingual website across the European Community.
Smallfolk.com
can be found at www.Smallfolk.com and www.Smallfolk.co.uk . - ends
- .../2 page two New website for children and Great Ormond Street
Hospital cont’d Contact: Jan Jananayagam, SmallFolk.com, on
020 8426 1887 or Kathy Chellew/Jo Hookes, Great Ormond Street Hospital,
020 7829 8671 Note to editors: 1 The medical expertise has been
sourced from Great Ormond Street Hospital. 2 Smallfolk.com has reduced
its set-up costs by setting up its own software company in Madras,
India, to maximise the donation it can give Great Ormond Street
Hospital. 3 Smallfolk.com comprises 3,000 pages of child health
advice and information, and sells 1,300 lines of baby products and
equipment, including clothes, books, CD-roms, prams and cots. There
is also the chance to get price reductions through a bulk purchase
pool.
Smallfolk.com
was co-founded by two former investment bankers who met in a lift
in New York two years ago while both working for Credit Suisse First
Boston. Both Jan Jananayagam, 31 and Ilesh Kotecha, 36, came to
Britain as refugees. Jan fled civil war in Sri Lanka and Ilesh escaped
persecution in Uganda under General Idi Amin in the 1970s. The pair
are both computer science graduates, and Jan also holds an MSc in
Applied Mathematics and an MBA from INSEAD Business School in France.
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