Little things can mean a lot. Take diapers. Most of us don’t give them much thought, but when they’re unaffordable, they take on an outsized meaning. New parents worry about keeping their babies and toddlers clean and healthy, and if they don’t have diapers, they can’t drop off their children at childcare and go to work. It’s a dilemma for a significant number of families in the counties that District 5150 serves, and so we decided to do something about it. In July, clubs throughout the district launched diaper drives, putting the focus on Maternal and Child Health for the first quarter of District Governor Yuhui Chen’s Seasons of Love and lending a hand to families in need.
“We wanted to make this project easy for the clubs so that we weren’t burdening the clubs and new club presidents with a new project,” says Susan Dean of District 5150’s Community Outreach Team and a member of the Rotary Club of San Francisco Chinatown. She explains that clubs were able to work with local nonprofits with which they already a connection, and members could give either boxes of disposable diapers or money. She points out that with money, clubs could simply order diapers online and have them delivered.
A second goal was raising awareness of Rotary, and members could get involved hands-on, showing Rotarians in action in their own communities. “One of the very exciting parts about this, on the Peninsula, one of the clubs was working with the Jackie Speier Foundation,” she reports, and members helped an Interact Club that was participating in a diaper drive to create a playbook they could use to spread the initiative to Interact clubs at other high schools as a leadership project.
By the end of September, 24 clubs had raised $20,000 for 16 nonprofits. “It was like a win-win-win,” says Dean, with recipients of the diapers, Rotary clubs and nonprofits all benefitting.
