Riwan Prasatya and Yani Pratiwi, owners of Mathnasium in Red Deer. (Supplied)

By Sheldon Spackman

April 2, 2022

Local business proud to celebrate Grand Opening after surviving pandemic hurdles

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After two years of overcoming challenges and hurdles presented by the COVID-19 pandemic shortly after their opening, a unique Red Deer business has weathered the storm and is finally able to celebrate an official grand opening.

Mathnasium – The Math Learning Centre will hold its official Grand Opening and Open House on Saturday, April 2, at 5250 22 Street, Unit 30 B, from 12:00 p.m.-3:00 p.m.. The long-awaited event will include games, food, ice cream and prizes, along with an appearance by Red Deer Mayor Ken Johnston.

Husband and wife owners Yani Pratiwi and Riwan Prasatya describe Mathnasium as a franchised math only learning centre based in Los Angeles, California with more than 1,000 locations in 14 countries.

“We are the only one in Red Deer and central Alberta,” explains Prasatya. “The approach is to make math make sense. So we want to build foundations for students so that they get stronger and be able to work on more advanced math problems.”

Prasatya says they originally opened their doors on April 2, 2020, not long after the Alberta government shut most things down on March 17, 2020.

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“Mathnasium was preparing itself to go online in 2019, 2020, but then the pandemic forced the company to push it down to everyone and make it ready, so that’s one of the major steps that was taken due to the pandemic,” he points out. “And for our site, our name was not known yet, so we did quite a bit of digital marketing cause that was one of the outlets that we could utilize at the time.”

Pratiwi adds, however, that business has really been picking up since September 2021.

“Right now we have more than 40 students. We started just with three students,” says Pratiwi. “The ones doing online, we have one student in Ponoka, we have another student in Stettler. It’s typically those who have to drive more than 45 minutes.”

Pratiwi says it’s the feeling of helping students that has kept their business going despite all the challenges that businesses have faced for the past two years.

Jazmal Carvajal, whose nine-year-old son Ignacio, now in Grade 3, has been with Mathnasium since October 2020. He says he was looking for a school to help his son improve his math skills when he was buying a juice in the store next to Mathnasium, and stopped in to ask about prices and methodology.

“We set up an evaluation for my son and after getting the results, I enrolled my son,” he recalls. “Why I made the decision to give it a try: I did know about Mathnasium before, and I said to myself, the only way to know if this will work for my son is to try. I said, let’s try for three months, and now, it is part of my son’s regular learning and the plan is to keep my son until high school.”

Carvajal says after his son enrolled and started his regular class in Mathnasium, his math skills have improved significantly.

“We were super happy when we asked math questions and he could answer without problems,” he exclaims. “The methodology that Yani and her team use to improve the math skill is amazing. They do not teach in the traditional way; they use games and other tools that have helped my son to visualize and learn math. If my son cannot understand something, they find another way to help my son understand the lesson.”

Carvajal notes the personal commitment and attention of Yani, for example, when she teaches his son.

“It is a personal class. My son has gained confidence in math, and it was because of Mathnasium,” says Carvajal. “If somebody asks me about Mathnasium, I recommend it immediately. It is a good math school and the attention is excellent.”