Years ago, I got a call in the middle of the night when a nurse broke the news to me that my dad was in a coma and I needed to return home immediately. My dad passed away three days later. My family is Nigerian and most of our relatives live there or in the UK and US. So, what followed was a tremendously distressing period of grief for my mum who had to take care of three emotionally distraught children, manage her full-time job, and continue to run our household by herself, even though what she really needed was someone who could take care of her while she recovered from her own grief.
Watching my mum balance so much by herself stuck with me, and eventually drove me to build something that focused on taking care of parents so that they can take care of their families no matter what stage of their parenting journey they're in, or what life may throw at them.
The very first step was a simple Instagram post describing what we pitched as a "parent helper", describing someone who would come into your home specifically to give you a break from your day to day household tasks. Much to our surprise, we were swamped with enquiries and chose 10 lucky parents to deliver the service to. One of them was a woman named Jane*, who I consider to be a real turning point. Jane was a working mum of a one year old. After she had her first visit with her "parent helper" we asked her what type of person she thinks would find our service most useful. She blurted out, "mums like me" and started sobbing. She later confessed that she had no idea that it was okay to ask for help with her home life as she was so used to being an overachiever at work.
This was quite confronting to me, but it really clicked at how impactful our service could be - it was the moment I realised mtime was solving a genuine, recurring problem for parents and it cemented my decision to go for it.
We’re delivering real social change for women everywhere
We deliver care by facilitating a more supported existence for the men & women whose families we support - but equally, for our Moncierges. mtime makes a concentrated effort to hire women who are new or returning to the workforce, in particular migrants and refugees who make up a significant number of our employees.
These women often face a number of challenges:
We flip these challenges on their head by:
Mtime is arming a workforce of women with confidence and passion, changing the way the world sees the value of ‘unpaid work’.