Diaper Bank of North Carolina in need of your donations
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DURHAM, North Carolina (WTVD) -- Monday is the launch of National Diaper Need Awareness Week, a campaign started by diaper banks across the nation to bring attention to the needs that children of low-income families may face when diapers become difficult to afford.
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Here at home, our own Diaper Bank of North Carolina is in need of your help right now, as it struggles to keep packs of size 5 diapers stocked.
Diaper Bank of North Carolina helps to keep more than 5,200 baby bottoms dry every month.
"We get calls for military families where one spouse is deployed, another one is at home qualifying for WIC and food stamps and cannot afford diapers," founder and executive director, Michelle Old, said. "We see teachers that call us, that are teaching our children every day, and then they're home at night and cannot afford diapers for their own children."
They provide more than 3 million supplemental diapers a year through the help of partner non-profits, to families across the state, including 600 military families at Fort Bragg alone. Now they're in desperate need of size 5 diapers as they have less than one pallet left.
This branch serves six counties and with two of these packets going out per child, this pallet of size 5s can be gone in less than a day.
Donate to the Diaper Bank of North Carolina here.
"A lot of folks think that it's the small, teeny-tiny babies that wear the most diapers, and they do wear a lot of diapers, but they grow through those sizes really, really fast," Old said, "and then they tend to stall out at around 4 and at 5 and stay in a 4 and a 5 for up to a year or year and a half before they're potty-trained."
"When I heard of people reusing diapers, and just not having enough to get through a day, I personally never had that problem," said Debbie Hauck, a long-time volunteer turned employee. "So to think that some child is having to deal with that, a parent is having to deal with that, it just broke my heart."
