Around happy hour time on the Monday before Thanksgiving, about a dozen young women gathered around a small mountain of children’s clothing heaped on a table in a midtown Manhattan loft. With the radio tuned to a hip-hop station and provisions such as Oreos nearby, the women, most of them strangers, set about the formidable task of sorting hundreds of tiny corduroy pants and sparkly sweatshirts into plastic bins.
Soon, the room — colorfully cluttered with children’s toys and stacked floor-to-ceiling with cases of Huggies — was a flurry of fabric and friendly chatter. It’s a typical sight at the headquarters of Baby Buggy, a nonprofit that shuttles children’s clothing, equipment and supplies to families in need.
“People love these events,” says Kiva Eisenstock, events and public relations manager of Urban Girl Squad, a networking group for New York City women in their 20s and 30s, which organized this evening’s festivities. “Often, they’ve wanted to get involved with volunteering but they’ve had a hard time doing it themselves. So they say it’s great when it’s arranged for them.”
Urban Girl Squad, which hosts social outings designed to help women build new connections in the city each week, dedicates about one event a month to a cause. Recently, members of the group have coached young athletes with disabilities with Kids Enjoy Exercise Now, weeded gardens in Riverside Park and prepped food for God’s Love We Deliver, which delivers meals to people with HIV/AIDS, cancer and other serious illnesses.
Jessica Perilla, a 29-year-old who runs a web design studio, says she heard about the event through the female entrepreneur group In Good Company, and was enticed by the opportunity to give back to children and families. “I don’t think we should only do stuff like this during the holidays, but there are more opportunities around this time of year,” she says.
The timing was also right for Anne Reiser, 26, a military defense buyer who has volunteered with Habitat for Humanity in Costa Rica in the past. “It’s nice to do something around Thanksgiving,” she says.
Baby Buggy was founded almost a decade ago by Jessica Seinfeld, cookbook author and wife of Jerry, after she found herself deluged with baby clothes and products she no longer needed and no way to pass the goods on to families who could use them. Today the organization is staffed by 11 people, many of them part-time, and relies heavily on volunteers.
Several times each week, miniature armies arrive from schools, churches, corporations and organizations like New York Cares to help sort donations and bundle packages for delivery to the 43 community service sites Baby Buggy partners with to distribute goods to families. Volunteers also mend donated sample clothing and clean recycled toys. “We don’t want to donate anything we wouldn’t give to our sister,” says Elizabeth Smith, Baby Buggy’s volunteer program manager.
Smith says that since the work is so hands-on, participants leave with a real sense of what it takes to move the quantity of products that Baby Buggy does — more than 150 requests, which account for up to 90,000 items, each month. She also makes it a point to share thank you cards and pictures from recipients with the volunteers, so they can see who they’ve helped.
“While we were all folding clothes and creating small bundles to be given away, there was a moment where I found myself feeling very connected with everyone there,” Perilla says. “There was a flow, we were all working together to create carefully chosen bundles of clothing because we knew that these would most likely be the only new clothes these children would be receiving for a long time.”
Hayley Mines, 26, who works for Estée Lauder, said hearing the details of how the organization works was a highlight of the night. “It made me want to volunteer for them more,” she says.
At the end of a shift, Smith says, participants “walk away feeling tired. And also feeling like they’ve had a meaningful experience.”
For the members of the Urban Girl Squad, this means not just giving to those in need, but also getting to know their own community of young New York women. “Everything I have done with UGS so far has been a great experience,” says Mines. “Working with a group of women to accomplish a goal in a short amount of time was a great feeling.”
Photo courtesy Urban Girl Squad