If you’ve been to the Warehouse in the last two weeks you’ll have noticed a little change – we now have one half of the space covered with floor to ceiling diapers! The shelving and the additional inventory was needed because we just brought on three amazing new partners: Polaris Project, Aspire Counseling, and Borromeo Housing. Each of these organizations works with different vulnerable populations of women and children each will be using diapers to enhance their work. Let me tell you a little about these organizations …
Polaris Project helps victims of human trafficking, many of whom have babies and young children. Through their drop in center and case management services they are helping women out of circumstances that are truly horrific. As Ngozi Williams put it, “Our clients face daily struggles that stem from being survivors of human trafficking: unable to obtain legal status to work. lack of higher education to get better paying jobs. and intense emotional and physical trauma from their trafficking experience. Our clients are extremely grateful for the financial and material assistance they can receive that will help them in their journey towards healing. Being able to be supplied with diapers on a regular monthly basis will also help our clients to not feel so helpless in providing for their children’s needs due to their circumstances.” Diapers have been offered at their drop in center for the last three months.
Aspire Counseling provides in home counseling to low-income women experiencing postpartum depression. They provide counseling for several months and referrals to other services and material assistance. After the fist month of distributing diapers we heard from Clara, one of their counselors, about the impact they were having: “This month I had a case involving a mother that has high risk mental health issues and is involved with Child Welfare. I started to have difficulty maintaining contact but when I mentioned that I had diapers to drop off I got an immediate call back and she attended the session.” When we talk about diapers as a “gateway resource” this is exactly what we mean.
Borromeo Housing has a simple but powerful (and proven!) idea, that teen moms who finish their education have many more options for themselves and their children. They provide housing to teen mothers and their children while they are finishing high school and college. They also offer an infant care pantry to members of their larger community. Diapers will help ease the already stretched budgets of these young mothers and will be used an incentive to attend parenting classes.
These three organizations are providing comprehensive services to some of our most vulnerable families and we’re honored to provide them diapers and other baby essentials. They join a network a 18 other social service agencies distributing approximately 75,000 diapers to more than 2,600 each month. Want to learn who we’re working with? Check out the full roster of our partners. We’re planning to bring on another three organizations early in the new year – as always, there’s more to come!