Last spring, two concerned citizens of the San Francisco Bay Area, Lisa Truong and Rachel Fudge, contacted homeless shelters to see how they could help. According to the Children’s Council of San Francisco (pdf), they didn’t expect the request they got back. The most urgent need of homeless shelters in the area was diapers.
Diapers, as Peter Rothberg writes at The Nation, are not covered by assistance programs like WIC and food stamps, however much poor moms might need them. And diaper companies, unlike formula makers, don’t make big donations to shelters and programs that help needy families.
After hearing this request in the spring of 2009, Truong and Fudge used their Web networks to drum up donations of 15,000 diapers, an effort so successful they decided to institute an ongoing diaper drive, which eventually turned into a nonprofit organization called Help a Mother Out (HAMO).
Volunteers can buy and donate diapers online or drop them off at drop-boxes for Truong, Fudge and other volunteers to pick up and distribute to area shelters. Since the beginning of the enterprise, in under a year, HAMO has collected and distributed 62,000 diapers.
“We have all learned that donating diapers is such a small action, but it makes such a huge impact on a family’s life,” Truong told the Children’s Council. “You don’t have to be a rich person to be a philanthropist.”
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