Sewickley Valley Sitters partners with Ringlet app to connect parents to childcare

When Rachael Wonderlin and Darla Whitlock need a babysitter they know where to look — their smartphones.

The moms are taking part in a soft launch for an app that connects parents to the Sewickley Valley Sitters, which offers a network of childcare for local families. Ringlet was created by Emily Bogue, an engineer from New York and the company’s chief technology officer. Its chief executive officer, Todd Feiler of O’Hara, is in the technology field.

Bogue and Feiler met with the Sewickley Area Mothers Club — Wonderlin and Whitlock are members — in March to help the parents schedule get-togethers. That group suggested Bogue and Feiler meet with Sewickley Valley Sitters.

The app will officially launch this month. Parents can sign up for open slots.

“This is a wonderful way to use technology,” said Whitlock, a mother of three who has been using Sewickley Valley Sitters since its inception four years ago. “I have had friends sometimes tell me they can’t go out because they can’t find a sitter and I have almost never had to say that, unless it’s prom night or homecoming or high school graduation or some event like that.”

The idea for a Sewickley babysitting club came from Quaker Valley High School graduate Mia Fusco. She assembled a group of teens to babysit, inspired by “The Baby-Sitters Club,” a popular series of tween books by Ann M. Martin about friends who create a babysitting club.

Fusco, who is studying marketing at the University of Notre Dame, said the partnership is “a really cool opportunity.”

“To take something like this and give us the opportunity to schedule jobs and not have to be in class and get a message ‘I need a babysitter,’ will help us keep this going because we can’t be as hands-on now that we are in college,” Fusco said.

Parents will be able to become members for a monthly or annual fee. Feiler, Bogue and engineer Colette Basiliere built in the ability for Sewickley Valley Sitters to screen parent applicants, accept their membership, and assign sitting jobs to the club’s screened babysitters all within the app. What was previously a manual process done via email and text has become automated.

Fusco and Montagnese can monitor the process while they’re at college.

“The app process is easy and it’s such a cool idea,” Wonderlin said. “I have faith that it will work because parents are frequently looking for sitters.”

What makes the Sewickley Valley Sitters special is that they are members of the community, Whitlock said. She said the teens are trustworthy and they love kids.

”They have both patience and energy,” Whitlock said.

The major mission of this app is to strengthen support networks and foster a connection between parents and caregivers, Feiler said.

“These sitters give parents peace of mind,” Feiler said. “They’ve developed such an amazing connection with the parents of Sewickley. We are just helping them make the connection stronger. We see the needs of support and social connection as intertwined. Parents need date nights and outings with friends to maintain their mental and social health and they often need childcare to enable those outings. Our mission is to strengthen access to support and social connection, particularly in the situations where they intersect, like childcare.”

“This is wonderful,” Fusco said. “We have gotten a lot of encouragement from parents who were stressed they might not be able to find a sitter once we went to college. What makes Sewickley Valley Sitters different is that we have built a culture and that this isn’t just a job to us. There are other ways to make money, but we like being part of this culture.”

Details: ringlet.com