The Idea
I don’t know about you but the thought of having to go back to work and leave my little guy with some stranger totally guts me. I’ve been dreading this day since before he was born. So much so, I vowed to find some alternative to the situation. This is the story of how More Than a Village came to be.
My dream was to not spend any of my hard earned money on childcare and be able to spend more time with my son. In my prenatal class I met, Michelle, who had the same dream and we began to talk about ‘sharing-care’. She’d watch my little one while I worked a couple days a week and I’d watch her little one while she did the same. Allowing us both to help our families financially while avoiding high childcare costs and spending more time with our babies. It was the perfect solution! Until, my family relocated and my 15 minute drive to Michelle became an hour. Our plans for ‘shared-care’ no longer seemed feasible.
With our move, not only did I lose my plan to ‘share-care’, but I also lost my mommy network. Although we weren’t moving that far away, just from city to suburb, the traffic could make the commute long and stressful, especially for new first time mums. I knew I wouldn’t see these gals and their babes as often as I’d like and would need to find a new mommy network. However, I had no money to join mommy groups and no real idea how to go about finding mums any other way. You see my original mommy network was basically all the mums from my prenatal class and a few from my prenatal yoga class. So now what?
The idea to create an on-line meeting space for parents happened after I was explaining my new predicament to my good friend Laura. She thought my idea to ‘share-care’ was amazing and expressed how she could really see this idea taking off, especially with the lack of affordable childcare spaces in our country. As we talked about it we both started to get excited about the possibility of making it happen and in doing so not only helping ourselves but other parents.
Now after many months of planning, researching, writing, searching for investors and the right web designer, our web site is in development. That alone feels like a HUGE success. But alas, there is much more work to be done before the site will be ready to launch.
More Than A Village is a social networking site for parents. It will feature a nationwide data base of members which you will have the ability to search, for other parents in your neighbourhood via your postal code. Our hope is that you will connect with other families in your area, make new friends, and when you feel comfortable enough start supporting each other in your parenting journeys. Maybe you will find someone to share –care with, or car pool with, or have play dates with or at the very least recognize in your neighbourhood. After all More Than A Village is all about building stronger communities and the first step is to meet your neighbours.
In the following weeks we are going to celebrate the launch of our blog by having some give-aways, so stay tuned. We’ll also introduce our team and tell you more about what you can expect from More Than A Village.
Thanks for stopping by. We’d love to hear your thoughts on our idea. Is it something that excites you? Would you use such a site?
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