Kiddocare, a platform that connects parents to trusted and experienced Malaysian women, and babysitters, on an on-demand basis, organized a panel discussion to officially mark the inaugural launch of its Care for Empowerment Series in an effort to continuously build a supportive community for parents by providing a safe, positive and constructive environment for sharing of issues and finding solutions through focus group engagements and candid discussions.
Its first installment kicked off with a lineup of women entrepreneurs that shared their qualms regarding the struggles that they had when it comes to juggling between their professional and personal life whilst exchanging practical tips and advice under the topic of ‘Care for Women Entrepreneurs: What Makes or Breaks Us’.
The panelists also engaged in an interactive discussion with the audience, who are also mostly working mothers, and managed to create an engaging atmosphere in a relaxed and informal setting so that more people will feel comfortable and safe to join in the conversation. This session was the first of many more to come from Kiddocare’s Care for Empowerment Series.
Being a platform that was created to establish an ecosystem that is able to support working parents by allowing them to have peace of mind of having professional carers to keep their children safe, happy, and nurtured, while they go out and work, Kiddocare believes in harnessing technologies to empower both ends of their main audience who are women (mothers and carers).
“With the start of this series, we will be able to unfold how these women managed to find support when it comes to balancing their professional and personal responsibilities. Hopefully, it will be able to shed some light on how quality care leads to efficiency at work, which subsequently articulates our agenda to create awareness on how the care economy is crucial in the economic development of the nation,” said the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Kiddocare, Nadira Yusoff.
In Malaysia, the concept of caregiving is perceived as a social problem. Nadira believes that the perception needs to change so that more people will start recognizing the enormous potential of the care economy and how it can benefit or help to address social issues.
Women and girls in countries around the world, regardless of socioeconomic status, perform a disproportionate amount of unpaid care work. For many women, these duties are in addition to their paying jobs, creating a ‘double burden’ of work.
In fact, Nadira explained that when the pandemic hit the world, it affected the participation of women in the workforce, causing the global GDP to suffer a loss of RM28 trillion, just because the women felt that they had to give up one thing in order to focus on the other. But even despite all that, the care economy is still not often regarded from the economic perspective, which is one of the main reasons why there aren’t a lot of investments being placed in the care economy.
“We hope that this series of dialogues will resonate with other women and open up opportunities for discussion, allowing us to support one another in any way we can,” she continued.
Kiddocare believes that the quality of childcare depends on the quality of the workforce that is responsible for taking care of them. Generally, the care workforce is mainly women and as women, they too have the need to be able to balance their work and personal lives.
“The working environment has to be supportive enough to cater to these women because it will help them feel more valued and appreciated for the work they are doing. At Kiddocare, we’ve always emphasized the wellness of caregivers. In order to get quality childcare, you have to take care of the workers. Since no one is talking about solving the issues to improve the quality of childcare, Kiddocare wants to be the one that starts that conversation,” she added.
From the perspective of one of the panelists Penny Choo, who is the co-founder of BloomThis, having reliable care support that can be provided through an on-demand babysitting platform is a priceless luxury for someone like her.
“As a person who established a business from the ground up, I understand the stress of having to run off to the office to handle a sudden emergency despite being needed at home with no one else around to look after my child. Having a platform like Kiddocare at hand helps put my mind at ease so that I can focus on my work tasks without getting swarmed with the heavy guilt of neglecting my loved one. This is why I truly believe that initiatives like the Care for Empowerment Series will greatly help the working parents and community at large,” Penny shared.
Kiddocare Community Hub
To further engage and support the parent community, Kiddocare also launched its Kiddocare Community Hub to provide an opportunity for women or family-oriented brands and even those within the travel & leisure industry, to establish collaborations with Kiddocare and gain exclusive access to 4 features under the program:
Kiddocare Influencers – With this program, Kiddocare will connect partners with influencers (seeder, nano, micro, macro, and even up to celebrity parents) to allow partners under the Kiddocare Community Hub to help increase the visibility of the partner’s products or services.
#MamaCareMamaShare – This will be a feature that will enable Kiddocare users who are moms to experience new products from partner brands. As product testers, the moms will be able to provide honest and sincere testimony about Kiddocare partners’ products or services.
Lead Generation – Via this program, opens an opportunity for partners to engage with Kiddocares’ growing community of mums. At Kiddocare, 81% of users are moms – the Chief Decision Maker of every household. With this, partners get to expand their reach to a wider target audience through various lead-generation efforts by Kiddocare such as Mums Club & Kids Club.
Kiddocare Marketplace – Kiddocare opens up its e-shop platform to women-led businesses & family-oriented brands to showcase their products & services on Kiddocare’s website. This will provide Kiddocare users with more purchase options or product offerings & transforms Kiddocare into a family-centric platform.
Moving forward, Kiddocare will continue to facilitate more open dialogue sessions with various like-minded people through the Series in order to spark more conversations around the care economy while also developing more programs in support of the parenting community. For more information regarding Kiddocare or its initiatives, visit www.kiddocare.my.