 We are back in the studio here at Davis Media Access. Welcome. Thanks for tuning in. I'm Autumn Lab-A-Renau and I'm really pleased to have with me today Becky Beeman who is the Executive Director of the Yolo Diaper Bank. We're going to learn a little bit about what role a diaper bank plays in a community, why we need such a thing and how they carry out their work here. So welcome to you. Thank you. So we were talking earlier. I first met you as a young woman because your mom and I have been part of the same suroptimist club here in town for a very long time. And so I think you're no stranger to showing up and doing community service, right? Yes, absolutely. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up starting a diaper bank here in Yolo County. Well, I grew up here in Yolo County in Davis. Being very involved in community service was very important to my parents. I was a Girl Scout here in Davis, which is where I learned a lot of my skills for organizing and event planning and how to address a community need. So as far as the diaper bank, I learned about diaper banking in 2017 during the Hurricane Harvey. And I saw a news segment about the diaper bank in Houston. And that was the first I'd ever heard of a diaper bank. But I had worked for other organizations that saw a need for diapers. And I knew that in this community, through donations, diapers are pretty limited. So I knew that we could use an organization that has the sole purpose of seeking out diapers and distributing them to the agencies that need them. Because they are ungodly expensive. They are. I raised three kids, including twins. And I'm so grateful I'm not anywhere near the diaper phase anymore. Absolutely. They're really, really expensive. Yes. They can make up a really big percentage of their income just to pay for diapers. And so do you find that families are having to make choices if they, in order to get diapers, which are kind of essential, they forego other things, food? Yes. Absolutely. So people will make choices between providing diapers and maybe filling a prescription for a parent or buying different qualities of food so they can afford diapers. People also try and make their diapers stretch. They might try to wash out disposable diapers and reuse them, or they might try to improvise and use something else that's not a diaper, like a kitchen towel or even a plastic bag. And one of the biggest things that we see is that parents can't always drop their kids off at daycare if they don't have enough diapers for them for the day. Some daycares do provide diapers, but a lot of them do not. Right. So they become, the lack of them becomes an exclusionary factor. And the lack of them, I imagine, also presents hygiene and health problems and things like that. Exactly. So I was talking to someone about diapers recently, not related to this. I don't know why, but, you know, her thing was, well, people just need to use cloth diapers. But you're faced with the same set of challenges. I did both when I was raising my kids. Cloth diapers are expensive. They result in a lot of laundry, which is an added expense. They're not without environmental impact on their own from the bleaching and the hot water and all of that. So it's a real conundrum for people. It is. And especially for a lot of low-income families, or maybe it's a single family or a single parent home where that parent is working full-time or both parents are working full-time, there is definitely a shortage of time to take care of cloth diapers. And again, if you're working or going to school and you need to drop your child off at daycare, they can't always accept cloth diapers at daycare. So it may be an option for some of the time, but we know that disposable diapers are an immediate need for low-income families. Back when we did daycare, they would not take cloth diapers. Yeah. It had to be plastic. Yeah. It definitely depends on the daycare. Okay. So a lot of us can go to Costco or Target or whatever and buy the big case of diapers that last however long it lasts. But what kind of numbers are we talking about in Yolo County for the families for whom that's really not possible or easy? So we know that about 2,500 kids here in Yolo County live in families that don't have enough diapers each month. And they usually run short by about 50 diapers every month. And that means that in Yolo County alone, what we call our diaper gap between what families can afford and what they need is almost 1.5 million diapers every year. Right. Now you got, I follow you on Facebook, you got a truckload, a literal truckload. Tell us about that. Yes, absolutely. Well, we applied for a grant through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we applied for a small local grant. They decided to send that on to Salt Lake City. And Salt Lake City responded with an overwhelming number of diapers and we did receive 320,000 diapers in sizes three and four. Which is going to last us a very... So that's the number of size three and four diapers that fill a semi truck. A semi truck. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yes, we got a call. Where do you want us to drop off your diapers? Right. And so we scrambled a little bit and luckily we had a local connection with the church that was willing to store them for us. So they're storing them while we are using them. That's generous of them. Yes, absolutely. So you're pretty well situated for size three and four. Size three and four. Mm-hmm. Yes. But of course, if you don't know anything about diapers, you know, when a baby is born, there's a newborn size and they quickly outgrow. And then the sizes go up one, two, three, four, five, six. And then usually they're into pull-ups and things like that. Pull-ups, training pants. Yeah. Training pants. Mm-hmm. But those size one and two diapers, you go through a lot of them. Yes. Yes. You go through a lot. Yeah. And with an average price per, if I don't know the prices these days, but if I were to go and buy a pack of size one diapers, what would I be paying? Across the sizes, we use an average of about 25 to 30 cents per diaper. Right. And then the pull-ups and the training pants, those do, they're more like 50 cents per. And that's, again, if you can buy them in bulk, we do buy large sizes. But if you do need to buy them, say at the gas station or a corner store, if you're not close to one of those big box stores, you're going to pay more for those as well. So how does the Yolo Diaper Bank find out who needs diapers? We work very closely with local agencies that are already serving families in need. So currently we're serving, we're working with three agencies. That's the Communicare Health Center. And they really work with almost all the low-income families who are having babies in our community. Almost all of them go to the Communicare Health Center. In fact, I think I remember donating to a diaper drive there some years ago. Yes. I think they used to do it. They used to do a diaper drive when they heard we were starting a diaper bank. They were so excited. They were like, great. We don't have to do that. They don't need to do their diaper drive anymore. And we deliver to them to each of their clinics every month. So they also don't have to store those diapers, which was a burden for them as well. So Communicare Health Center's Empower Yolo, which runs the domestic violence shelter and has lots of services in their office as well. And the Woodland Personal Care Pantry, which is a once-a-month distribution. You're familiar with them. Yes. It's run out of the Woodland United Methodist Church. And they distribute any number of personal care items like shampoo, laundry detergent, things like that. And they do distribute diapers as well. Because those are not, everything you just mentioned there, those are not items that a food bank or a food bank, for example, would typically carry. Use your food closets will have those kinds of items, but they definitely cannot be purchased with SNAP or the food stamp program. There are some benefits that you can use for those items, but again, those benefits have to stretch a long way. So families really need some help with those items. Well, let's talk about the diaper drive that's going on. So you start, it's been running the whole month of September. I think by the time the show airs, there will still be at least a week left. And looking at your website, there's a whole bunch of places where people can drop off. So let's hit some highlights here. Sure. Well, we are very excited to partner with the YOLO Federal Credit Union. And you can drop off at any one of their branches, as well as in Davis. We have a big list of people who are supporting us by hosting a diaper drive box, including the food co-op. I saw it at the food co-op. There's a bubble belly, which is a mom and baby store, Swim America. So they see a lot of kids coming through and several other locations. And in Woodland, you can drop them off at a well-stocked home downtown. So all over the county and serving all over the county. So what have you learned in this first year? You have a board, obviously. And you have volunteers who help distribute and help pick up. You must be pretty well networked. But what have you learned in the year and what are your hopes going forward into your second year? Yeah. What we've learned in our first year is that the YOLO County community is amazingly generous and supportive. And what we've also learned is that when we talk about diaper need, the most frequently thing we hear from people is that they had no idea about diaper need. So our job really is to bring awareness to the community because we know once they're aware, they're going to want to help us and to support us. So that's really what we've learned and a lot about how to wrap diapers and count them and how to, you know, the systems that we need to have in place to get them out to the agencies that are in need. But yeah, we look forward to being in the community for many years to come and learning even more. So if someone hears this or sees this and they need help, how do they get in touch with you and how do they ask? Yeah. Absolutely. The best place to go is to our website. So that's yolodiperbank.org. And there we have a list of the agencies that are distributing diapers. And very soon, we're kind of still working out the details, but we hope to have a physical location very soon that people can come and visit. So if they need emergency diapers, as well as if they want to volunteer with us, there will be a place. By that comment, are you working out of your garage? We are currently operating out of Becky's garage. This is how nonprofits start. It is. It is. So, but we're, you know, so excited that in just one year, we have gained so much support that we are ready to move into our own space. Right. Well, I think you need another year or two before you can do Big Day of Giving, and I expect to see you out at Big Day at the dock at some point. Yeah, absolutely. Getting out the word about the good services you do. Let's give the website one more time so people have it. So, it's yolodiperbank.org. Okay. And please do take a look. What I've learned preparing for this segment is that kindness takes all forms, and I never really thought about it, taking the form of a diaper before. But there you have it. My thanks to Becky Beeman for coming in and talking with us today. And thanks to you for tuning in. You can find out more about, you can watch all the, in the studio, program archives online, dctv.davismedia.org, and we're on YouTube as well under Davis Media Access. And we make a point here of bringing in nonprofits and lifting up and highlighting the good work that they do being a nonprofit ourselves. We get it. So, thanks so much for joining us today. Thank you. And thank you. See you next time.