little ones
BY DUNCAN HALL
Finding a
Baby Sitter,
Just Got Easier!
A new online service that seeks to match
parents with willing and qualified babysitters
is promising to help parents put some
‘couple time’ back into their busy lives.
L
aunched in
April, jobber.
bm is an on-
line, interactive job market
where people needing help
with various tasks can post
jobs – and those looking for
cash-in-hand work can bid
for them.
In August, child care/
babysitting was added to the
range of work categories.
“When a couple has
two trusted babysitters,
their social life revolves
around the availability of
those two people,” says
website founder Stafford
Lowe. “It doesn’t have to be
that way. There are other
qualified people out there,
and jobber.bm will help you
to find them.”
Before launching the new service,
Lowe convened a focus group of six
mothers to determine what they would
look for in an online service to identify
babysitters. “Two of the biggest things
to come out of the focus group were a
need to see some sort of CPR qualifi-
cation, and also an awareness of child
sexual abuse,” he says.
20
Soon thereafter, Lowe and his
wife, Laura, took a course offered by
SCARS (Saving Children and Revealing
Secrets), a Bermuda registered char-
ity that was formed to create greater
awareness of the devastation that child
sexual abuse can cause in the life of an
innocent child, their affected family
and community.
They now recommend the course
to friends – and to parents seeking