Shortly after my son Billy had his first birthday, his Dad and I ended our relationship. It was a tough time and I was not prepared for the loneliness I would feel as a single parent. I found myself dreading the weekends when the loneliness of being a single parent was compounded, and feeling guilty that I wasn’t able to really enjoy time with my son. What I longed for during that time was connection with other people in a similar situation who could relate to what I was going through.

‍When I discovered (despite 1 in 4 families being single parent families) there was no app or community that offered this, I felt compelled to create the solution I needed and the one I wished existed. I wanted to give the term single parent a bit of a positive rebrand - so I decided to call the app Frolo - a combination of the words ‘friends’ and ‘solo’. Frolo Community launched in 2019 and has exploded into an app with a thriving community of tens of thousands of single parents across the UK and Ireland.

The Frolo Community has become a nurturing, positive and safe place to connect with people who get it, where frolos can easily make friends, seek advice, as well as share experiences such as virtual meetups, playdates, nights out and trips away. My life has been so enriched and empowered by the Frolo community and the friendships that Billy and I have formed. The way I felt when I first became a single parent has been completely flipped around in the best possible way, and I know many other frolo users feel the same.

As the community has grown significantly in the last couple of years, it has also become clear through feedback from the community related to dating as a single parent that we can often find the traditional dating apps not to be the most encouraging or empowering experience. As single parents we often come across the term ‘baggage’ being used to describe kids and often it can feel like having kids might go against us. With this is mind, we decided create a respectful and empowering dating app experience for single parents where everyone has the same shared importance of family with Frolo Dating - the worlds first fully user verified single parent dating app. Already many frolos have found love with other single parents through Frolo, and we are excited to see many more lovely relationships and blended families form in the future.