Media Coverage
As articles appear in the press we will reproduce them here.
CANADIAN CHRISTIANITY
July 2010
Turning pew sitters into house sitters
Christian House Sitters is an international non-profit organization based in the United Kingdom that claims to match vacationing members of recognized Christian churches with other vacationing members of recognized Christian churches.
It provides home owners with reliable people to look after their homes and pets free of charge while they are away, and it provides house sitters with rent-free accommodations while they are on vacation.
The service is free for home owners and costs 20 pounds a year for sitters.
All income from the site goes towards supporting starving orphans in Kenya.
Article From Joy Magazine. January 2010
Article From Cathedral Connections. St Peter's London Ontario
Spring 2009
A UNIQUE ADVENTURE - HOUSESITTING IN MEDIEVAL ENGLAND
By Joyce Hilton
At some point we all think about a dream vacarion, especially one that costs little and allows you to enhance your love of Christianity and its history and architecture.
My dream vacation and journey began when I stumbled across a website that promised just that. It was called Christian House Sitters, an Internet based service that brought Christian home owners and Christian house sitters together.
Christians home owners who wanted to take a holiday and needed some one to look after their home and! or their pets while away could apply. The other side of the service accommodated persons who could not afford a holiday but would now be enabled to take a break and see other countries. Their only expense wouId be the cost of travel and their food.
It was totally Christian based and required everyone involved to have a reference from their church.
The registration cost was twenty dollars Canadian for the year which allowed me access to information about various properties in different countries that required a house sitter.
A couple in Norwich, England advertised for a sitter for three months. I was born in England and wanted to experience the atmosphere of its mediaeval history and churches. Norwich seemed like a perfect fit! It is a church enthusiast's paradise. It possesses more mediaeval churches than any other English City. There is an old saying in Norwich that there are 52 churches for every week of the year and 365 pubs for every day of the day. (My interest was in the former.)
In addition to its great cathedral and the ruins of three other buildings, there are thirty-one other parishes in Norwich that have survived.
I arrived in England in early January of this year and met my awesome hosts who were leaving in the next few days for New Zealand.
Before they left, they drove me to Great Yarmouth, a city on the east coast of England situated about fifty miles away. Along the way, we stopped to look at the ruins of a thirteenth century Augustinian Priory. Even though the walls had eroded to half their size and roofs had long disappeared, you sensed that this was once a holy place and the likely home of earlier saints. It was the first step in my quest to visit ancient holy places. ............................................................................
..................I left realizing that I was a part of a much larger faith community, one that transcends countries and history
This is an extract from an article in CHURCH TIMES dated 27th April 2007
Swap your way to a holiday
For an affordable holiday offering all the comforts of home, consider Christian house-swapping, suggests Rachel Harden
LAST YEAR, Ray White and his wife, Marilyn, decided they wanted to take an extended break from work. Financially, however, they were not in a position to fund a long holiday. House-sitting seemed an ideal solution.
"We had heard a lot about it. Looking on the internet, we found a whole range of sites. We picked an American website we liked the look of and signed up. We chose a house in France, where the owners were looking for sitters for a couple of months to care for the plants and various pets, including dogs and a cat. It was 45 minutes inland from La Rochelle, an area we wanted to explore. We contacted the owners, they liked the sound of us, and it was all set up."
Apart from the fact that the dogs needed more exercise than they had been warned, the Whites enjoyed their two months on the Continent.
But they came away thinking it could have been so different. "The owners knew absolutely nothing about us, we gave no references and no one checked if our personal details were correct. We could easily have rolled up with a van and taken every-thing. We were also conscious, on the other hand, that we might have arrived to an entirely different set-up to the one described. In a sense, both parties were open to an abuse of trust."
On their return, the Whites decided to investigate whether there were any Christian house-sitting agencies. There weren't. "I am a psychologist, and my wife and I work in stress management, but we were no longer working full-time so we thought: why not set one up?"
This month, then, saw the launch of their Christian House Sitters. The site received 500 hits in the first week.
The attraction of any house-sitting service, explains Ray, is that no money exchanges hands, and the use of the house and running expenses are free (apart from the telephone) in return for certain chores like pet-sitting or watering the plants.
The new service, overseen by the Whites, charges £20 per year for administration: once registered, clients - whether they are looking for a sitter or offering their services - have access to all the others on the list. A minimum of ten per cent of any income will go to support Unsung Heroes, a Christian charity in South Africa.
Apart from adding obvious safeguards - like not giving out email addresses until references have been checked - no one is accepted on the site without being a church member.
"We feel strongly that if people swap, they will also get a chance to swap a new church family while on holiday if they want to."
The couple are aware of the new Sexual Orientation Regulations (SORs), which came into force this month, making it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality. They do not ask invasive questions, but stress that after registration each client sorts out their own house-sitting arrangements. This is left to the discretion of the individual. Users are also encouraged to set up their own contract of agreement (the website contains suggestions), as the Whites make it clear that they are not liable if things go wrong
Ray White believes that house swapping and sitting will become increasingly popular with Christians, because of its lifestyle challenge. "Not only is the concept of sharing very biblical, but there is also that degree of trust that you may not have with other agencies. Of course, it, has the added attraction of freeing up funds which can be used for other things - maybe even giving some to charity."
Helping Christians have a Free Holiday
(Mon Oct 20 2008)
During this time of international financial crisis many people are finding it increasingly difficult to afford a holiday.
Research has clearly shown that during times of severe stress holidays can be more important than ever and can help prevent many stress related health problems.
Christian House Sitters provides a worldwide service to enable members of recognized Christian churches to enjoy a rent free holidays.
It also enables home owners to have a reliable person to look after their home and pets free of charge whilst they are away.
This can save both parties a great deal of money and therefore enable them to benefit form a much needed break that they may otherwise have been unable to afford.
This service has already helped many people from around the world and it is expected that as the credit crunch bites many more will benefit from this facility.