When Lydia O’Regan started the Halifax Diaper Bank, she thought she’d be helping a few people a week.
She was wrong.
Interest in her grassroots project has exploded. She’s now giving diapers to about five families a day, each sending her desperate pleas for help as they struggle to make ends meet.
“I delivered to a lady last week whose child was running around the house naked,” O’Regan said. “I’ve heard of women using pillowcases and towels and just doing the best that they can to get to payday.”
O’Regan founded the diaper bank just three months ago. She thought it would be a great way to gather the leftover diapers and open boxes people could not donate to charities.
In that short amount of time, she has helped hundreds of people and given out thousands of diapers.
“They’re making decisions between basic necessities, toys for Christmas, food, rent gas, diapers for their children.”
O’Regan said she quickly learned that many asking for help don’t have transportation. So she has set up 11 drop off spots in HRM, enlisting friends and family to help deliver or pick up donations.
Among them is her cousin, Rita-Clare LeBlanc, who is in the final weeks of her own maternity leave. She said it was eye-opening to become a parent and see the cost of baby supplies.
LeBlanc said she was fortunate that she didn’t need help, but knows many families that do.
“Every mom, every parent deserves to not have that stress of where their next sleeve of diapers is coming from,” LeBlanc said.
“Lydia is doing so much with the diaper bank so any little bit we can help with, we’re all hands on deck when we can.”
Before the Halifax Diaper Bank, people could turn to family resource centres or some food banks for help.
The Chebucto Family Centre said diapers and baby formula are the most requested items right now, with demand growing significantly in the last few years.
It hands out about ten diapers at a time in order to balance donations with demand. In some cases, that would last about two days.
O’Regan will offer families an entire box as long as she has stock. If families need a specific brand or size, she puts a call out on Facebook, using her growing network to make sure there’s supply.
“It’s a passion project for me. It’s something that’s near and dear to my heart.”
Halima Marjany can tell many stories about the difference the donations are making.
Marjany is an immigrant support worker who helps vulnerable newcomers to Canada. She said many of them are struggling to pay their bills as they set up their new lives.
“It’s very stressful. For food, they can manage things. For clothes, they have a lot of organizations that give free clothes. But for diapers, it’s one of the [biggest] things that they can’t manage.”
Last week, Marjany picked up boxes of diapers for families from Syria and Ukraine. She said one family has a teenaged son who is disabled and needs a specific kind of diaper.
Marjany reached out to O’Regan, who immediately had a solution.
“She gave me a big box for a couple of weeks and I gave it to this family. [The mother] was crying when she saw the big box I brought to her.”
O’Regan has no plans to expand beyond Facebook, and no intention to become a registered charity.
She has a full-time job and a two-year-old son, so she’s trying to keep the effort manageable.
She stores the diapers in the master bedroom of her Halifax apartment. It’s now filled, floor to ceiling with donations that will soon be out the door.
“It fills my cup, so it becomes easy.”
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