Do you ever turn on the news just to turn it straight back off again because it is so depressing, and then felt guilty about ignoring it? Join the club. I’ll admit I have turned off the news on more than one occasion and then beaten myself up about my lack of action to help change things.
After the birth of my daughter my sensitivity to children’s issues in the news was so raw that I couldn’t bear to watch at all. I felt helpless in the face of children’s suffering be it war, famine, illness or poverty. What could I do that would actually make a difference? Then in early 2009, my friend, Rachel Fudge, contacted me about an idea she and Lisa Truong were hatching in the San Francisco Bay area. At a fundraising event for a local women’s shelter they found out that diapers, wipes, and women’s sanitary items were among the most requested, but least donated items. They decided to host a diaper drive online using social media, facebook, Twitter, listservs and email. They called their idea Help A Mother Out.
I was inspired. Help A Mother Out was an idea that I could piggy back on and take my rhetoric about helping families and children and move it into action. It was a small action, but it was action. I could, with some help, host an online diaper drive and I knew just the mama to host it on her blog: TucsonMama. (I was blogging too, but about our adventures in Italy while we were stationed there for my husband’s work.) I set up a Facebook Cause Page and an Amazon Wishlist and we were off! We blogged about diapers, we shared links on facebook and Twitter and in a few short weeks we raised enough money to buy several thousand diapers for the Diaper Bank of Southern Arizona.
The same experience happened to those organizing in the Bay Area, Oakland, Berkeley, Sacramento, San Jose, and San Diego, where moms with young kids were finding a little time online to raise awareness about the need for diapers and help a mother out. Initially, Help A Mother Out was to be a one-time event, a Mother’s Day Diaper Drive, but the outpouring of support has turned this once off diaper drive into a non-profit that empowers mothers across the West take action, to reach out, to help.
This Saturday, March 12, 2011, Tucsonans can join us by simply bringing a new pack of diapers for donation and five items of children’s clothing for exchange at the Swap-O-Rama which Help A Mother Out –AZ is hosting with St. Mark’s Preschool at 3809 E. 3rd St, 10am- 12pm. Check us out on Facebook, or for more information email Rachel.miller@helpamotherout.org.
Rachel blogs at http://growfamilygrow.wordpress.com about Tucson, parenting, chickens and life.
