Early Edge Team Volunteers with Baby2Baby
When it comes to raising kids, so many families are struggling to make ends meet, having to choose between paying for food, rent, child care, health care, and all the essentials that are needed. A new survey from the RAPID-California Voices Project found that in LA County alone, over 70% of the families with children under age 6 who they interviewed struggle to pay for basic needs.
It can be especially challenging for families of infants and toddlers, with the constant need for essentials such as diapers and formula, plus gear like car seats, high chairs, cribs, and strollers. The need for diapers alone is dire, with 1 in 2 families across the U.S. struggling to afford providing them to their children.
That’s why this month, the Early Edge California team was so excited to have the opportunity to volunteer with national nonprofit organization Baby2Baby to support under-resourced families. Led by co-CEOs Kelly Sawyer Patricof and Norah Weinstein, the organization provides children living in poverty with diapers, clothing, and all the basic necessities they deserve. In the last 13 years, Baby2Baby has distributed over 450 million critical items–including 20 million diapers–to children in homeless shelters, domestic violence programs, foster care, hospitals, and underserved schools as well as children who have lost everything in the wake of disaster. Initially focused on supporting families in Los Angeles, Baby2Baby now reaches more than one million children annually in all 50 states. Their special initiatives over the years have included support for infants, such as their Sweet Dreams Initiative for safe sleep and their Baby Bundles initiative, providing care kits to low-income families to help care for their newborns.
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During our visit to the warehouse in Los Angeles, the Early Edge team had the opportunity to learn more about the organization, its impact, and daily operations, then got to work on several key projects in support of children and families including inspecting, sorting, and packing up children’s clothes, from infants to teens, for the winter season and then creating Maternal Health & Newborn Supply Kits that will be delivered to new moms as part of Baby2Baby’s initiative to combat maternal mortality across the U.S.
Early Edge was grateful for the opportunity to give back our time to directly support a critical population of children, infants and toddlers living in poverty, through our volunteer work with Baby2Baby.