In October 2019, Maj Jacque Vasta had an idea and published it on ideascale.gov. Her idea was called Kinderspot, a mobile app for parents of children enrolled in Department of the Air Force CDCs to streamline the process of temporarily renting their child's spot to eligible families with short-term child care needs.
She found that when you have kids enrolled in a CDC, and you have to go on a long TDY, you often have to pay to keep the spot—even if you aren’t using it. Many Airmen have tried to rent their children’s spots when they’re away, but have little success because a network of eligible users looking to match needs does not exist.
In February 2020, Maj Vasta entered and won the 2020 Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center’s Innovation Rodeo and secured funding to bring Kinderspot to reality. In July 2020, a Small Business Innovation Research Direct to Phase II contract was awarded to a commercial partner, Oddball, to develop and launch Kinderspot.
Not only will this app provide an easy avenue to find short-term high quality child care in our CDCs, it will also help Airmen with children enrolled at the CDC, who are responsible for paying year-round to hold their spot, the ability to receive credit for weeks booked by eligible renters. Easy success reduces stress, and saves money for our airmen without impact to current ops.
We value your support as we launch this app, and hope to provide you with the best possible tool to use.