Diaper Need Awareness Week 2024
Help us wipe away diaper need, September 23-29, 2024
Diapers are surprisingly expensive. The fourth highest expenditure for families with young children (after housing, food and utilities), more than 1 in 5 families in Toronto cannot afford them. Removing roadblocks to diapers and wipes promotes infant physical health, supports positive parental mental health, unlocks access to childcare so parents can work, and allows families to reinvest their diaper budget in other essentials like food and housing.
“Diaper need” is the gap between the diapers a family can afford and what is required to keep a child clean, dry and healthy. For our Baby Love families, the gap can be upwards of 100 diapers a month. Diaper Need Awareness Week was established in 2012 to draw attention to this important issue, encouraging conversation and action.
Every month, we’re in our communities distributing close to 100,000 diapers to families in the Greater Toronto Area through over 12 trusted charitable partners, helping to close the diaper gap. Partnering directly with manufacturers to produce diapers significantly reduces the cost and allows us to reach 2.5 times as many babies compared to retail prices.
Our Baby Love families tell us wipes are just as critical, and the cost just as prohibitive, as diapers to keeping babies clean and healthy. We’re working with our manufacturing network to find a scaled and affordable way to add wipes to our permanent offering, but we don’t have one yet.
This Diaper Need Awareness Week, we’re asking our supporters to help us meet the urgent needs of our families by hosting a wipes drive. 5,000 packs of wipes donated would allow us to add wipes alongside our diaper distribution for the families we support for the rest of the year.
What is a wipes drive?
- During Diaper Need Awareness Week (September 23-29), you’ll encourage members of your community to bring new, unopened wipes to a location of your choosing – we find a communal location like a school or office lobby works best
- Participants will be encouraged to include a note of support for our Baby Love families alongside their wipes donation
What is my role as a site host?
Think of yourself as the team leader for your site who will help organize and promote the drive to your community and be the point person for our team at Baby Love. That means you’ll:
- Get buy-in from your community. If you’re planning to mobilize a school, sports, business or other community group and/or use their facilities as your drop-off location for your wipes drive, give them a convincing pitch on the cause; here is a first start
- Set a goal. Motivate your community by letting them know what they are working towards. Frame your goal as the number of wipes you are looking to collect, or the number of children you are hoping to support (3 packs of wipes support 1 child for a month)
- Promote your drive. Advance promotion of your drive is key! We’ll provide you with some templated materials, but personalized and frequent reminders before and during the drive get the best results
- Manage the site. During National Diaper Need Awareness Week (September 23-29), you’ll set up the physical site with signage and the donation bin(s)
- Drop off your wipes at our office or warehouse. We’ll see you and your wipes at (3109 Bloor St W or 2 Kelvin Avenue (Hours 9:00-4:00pm) at the close of the drive week
Help us wipe away diaper need
Still with us? The first step is easy! Fill in the form below to let us know you’re interested in hosting, and helping us reach our goals. Thank you for your support!
Canadian Charitable Registration Number: 775507015 RR 0001