Transcript
Other organizations that can also help with the whole caregiving topic. I mean, there’s there’s more and more co-working spaces with childcare opening up. It’s still few and far between, but it is up and coming. There’s also other organizations and platforms, for instance like “SitEinander”. It’s a platform where parents can help each other with caregiving, and actually, one of the first sort of co-working with childcare spaces that existed in Leipzig, I think that was here in Germany, at least they were all based on volunteering. So the parents would take turns caring for the children. I mean, this is obviously a bit more challenging just because you have to give your time, but you also get time in return to focus on your work. So if there if there’s no service like ours in your area, it might be worthwhile to look into networks where you can get together with other parents, find a place to work, and then just take turns taking care of the children.
There’s many factors that play into finding the right work environment. Of course, there is not having distractions, being able to have a proper workplace, a desk, a chair and good Internet. Obviously these are like key factors, but also feeling comfortable in a workspace and feeling understood and valued as the person that you are, and if you look at a lot of the co-working spaces, like the bigger ones, they focus very much on design and just providing basically a space to work in.
But what is really important at juggleHUB, for instance, is that we want to be in constant dialogue with our members and with the people working here so that we can understand what their needs are and how we can respond to them and help them because they’re on their own. So they come to this place to be amongst other people to get the support. So that’s what we try to give them. And it helps us stay flexible because we are constantly trying to figure out ways that we can change our service or adjust our service, and this is obviously also one of the very important abilities of founder has to have to stay flexible and to listen to your instincts. If a place doesn’t feel right, if where you work doesn’t feel right, or if even the person you’re working with doesn’t feel right to you, you should definitely listen to that and then change this, if it has to be.
Especially for parents, I think it’s important to be surrounded by people that understand the challenges that you face. And actually, one of the fathers that that used to work here at juggleHUB said something that really captures it very well, he says, because here he can work and be professional when he needs to be or when he feels like it. But on the other hand, he can also turn on his daddy side and and and give that part of himself enough space. And that feels incredibly good because he can be true to who he is and what is important to him.
