​Hello readers!

I am Franca Desjardins and my blog is A Moment With Franca! I was recently chosen to be KidZania London's 1st Blog Ambassador following the launch of the brand new KidZania London Blog! This means that my family and I will be covering lots of important events at KidZania over the next 12 months and you will see me writing for the KidZania London Blog more often!

This is a huge honour for me and my family and we are super excited to be able to show you what KidZania has to offer. To start this fantastic new role, we attended our first event on Saturday 13th October - the KidPreneur Festival! We met 4 amazing young KidPreneurs who shared their tips and tricks about their businesses and personal journeys to success! My girls had a day full of workshops, cool activities and they learnt a lot of new skills. They left KidZania feeling really inspired!

Meeting Tommy Mallet, CEO of Mallet Footwear!

I was really looking forward to meeting Tommy because he is not only a successful businessman stocking his Footwear company over 190 stores across Europe but he has taught me and my girls that despite having dyslexia you can achieve anything! This for me is super inspirational because my eldest daughter, Bella, was recently diagnosed with dyslexia and listening to Tommy gave us a lot of hope! I am sure his story is very inspirational for a lot of other people too. 

'Design Your Own Trainers' Workshop with Tommy...

Tommy did several workshops during the day and my girls attended one of them. He gave them a paper with the outline of a trainer and my girls did what they love the most: colouring! While they were colouring, Tommy was talking to them and telling them how good they were! It was lovely to watch! My girls loved meeting Tommy and they really enjoyed his workshop so much that my eldest daughter attended another workshop at the end of our visit. She really enjoyed it!

Meeting Jenk Oz, CEO of iCoolKid!

After meeting Tommy, we went downstairs to the iCoolKid stand that was in front of the KidZania Theatre. We had the opportunity to have a chat with Jenk and asked him all about his business adventure. He is only 13 years old and he started his website iCoolkid.com when he was 12 years old! It started because his mother was asked by his friend's parents what he was doing during the weekend because their kids wanted to go to the same places too. So he started a newsletter that went out to a list of parents and then with time, the list kept growing and they started his website with cool content designed by kids for kids!

Jenk also likes singing, dancing and acting as well as travelling all over the world talking at seminars. He coaches and gives advice to business leaders double his age! What a fantastic achievement! He was very chatty and very kind to share his journey with us. My girls were amazed listening to him as he is very charismatic and of course he was the youngest of the 4 KidPreneurs we met that day... It was really great listening to his stories!

Meeting Rose Dyson, CEO of Pura Cosmetics!

This was a super cool workshop! We had a lovely chat with Rose and Bella was super interested in learning how she developed her Pura Cosmetics business. She is now 18 years old and she started her business when she was just 15! She got a lot of support from her school as well as friends and family. She only started with £25 but managed to get a profit from it and she just kept growing from there each time she was selling her lovely natural lip balms. I thought this was very impressive!

Rose asked Bella what she wanted to be when she was older and at the moment, Bella is keen on being a hairdresser (this might change but this is what she told Rose). Rose advised Bella to start getting involved in any initiatives organised by her school and to look for internships in hair salons to start learning the tips and tricks of the job at an early age! I thought this was great advice! The younger they start having this mentality the better. We really enjoyed talking with Rose and I am sure a lot of what she said has stuck in my daughter's head!

Meeting Christian, Co-Founder of DinoByteLabs!

We were originally due to meet Louise Leolin at the KidPreneur Festival but unfortunately, she couldn't attend. But Co-Founder, Christian, came and ran all the talks and workshops instead. The Founders of DinoByteLabs were also very young when they started their website but they were always very intrigued and interested in games!

'Create Your Own Gaming World' Workshop with DinoByteLabs...

Christian's workshop was really fun! Kids had to pretend they were designing a new game, so they started putting together some ideas as well as drawing and colouring. My girls loved the colouring bit as I expected... And Sienna, my youngest daughter who is only 4, is too little to understand more than colouring but also loved meeting Christian and had a great time at his workshop!

Meeting the KidZania London Mayor!

This is why we love KidZania London so much! Our kids can experience what a real life should be when they are older so of course they had to have a Mayor for this cool city, LOL! The KidZania London Mayor was also attending this event so we just had to take a photo with him too! My girls thought it was funny that they met the Mayor! Kishan is lovely and we are looking forward to seeing him again when we go back to KidZania!