Help Wisconsin babies stay clean, dry, and healthy

Jake’s partners with community nonprofits to distribute hygiene products, including diapers, to people in need. This is a rural area pilot project in Green Lake County.

People living in poverty in rural areas typically face unique challenges due to a lack of resources and inability to reach existing resources. Recognizing the scarcity of options for families in need, Jake’s Network of Hope partnered with Green Lake County Health and Human Services and Children’s Wisconsin Start Right program to provide parents in poverty with much needed diapers for their littles.

We launched our project to serve Green Lake County in early 2021, and started delivering diapers in February. Currently our partnership is serving 33 families.

Here’s a bit more about the impact this has made, from both our partners:

Green Lake County Health and Human Services:

Our partnership helped a young mom keep her second child after the of her child was using drugs and went to jail. The mom, now a single mother, is also struggling with mental health issues. Her first child (of a different father) is now living with the father’s family.

She enjoys working with her case worker to manage her mental health issues and is now trying to do well for her baby boy. She has no income and lives in low income housing. Her caseworker is helping her apply for disability because of her mental health issues. She’s almost done with the caseworker, but they are hoping to transition her into a new program to continue getting help.

Start Right program

A family that just registered to the program, only Spanish-speaking and the mother is an 18-year-old with a 5-month-old baby. She is going to be starting to work but she wasn’t working because of the baby, so they really needed diapers and wipers. Diapers are so expensive and babies run out of diapers really fast. She lives with her boyfriend, a stepdad, both as first-time parents.

This is a pilot project made possible by funding from the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation. Their generous gift does not cover all expenses related to this work. Consider giving a donation as part of our Circle of Change to make a lasting difference, and give diapers to families in need.

“I’ll never forget how thankful she was. It was a truly beautiful experience.”

Meagan Johnson taught cloth diaper basics in Milwaukee for a couple years, but in spring 2020 met a mom that would shift her trajectory.

“She was a single mom of a baby boy, and she couldn’t afford the start-up cost of cloth diapering,” Meagan said. “But, her baby had severe eczema, and disposable diapers made it worse.”

The mother was looking for someone willing and able to donate cloth diapers to her. Meagan said she had a “large collection” of diapers herself, so she compiled a kit and dropped them off on the family’s front porch.

“Her gratitude and the relief she felt was overwhelming,” Meagan said. “She felt a huge weight had been lifted off her shoulders, because now she wouldn’t have to worry about budgeting for diapers, and most importantly, her son’s skin could now heal.”

This memorable experience inspired Meagan to dig deeper into diaper need. In Milwaukee, the poverty rate in 2020 was 25.4 percent, while the national average sat at 9.2 percent, she said. The hard truth was that 68% of families with children in Milwaukee qualify for low-income status, and there were not resources to meet diapering needs..

“I decided to launch a small cloth diaper lending program, but when I started looking for a local diaper bank to partner with – there wasn’t one,” Meagan said. “After that realization, and doing a lot of research about diaper banks around the country – I knew this needed to be something bigger.”

That’s why Meagan launched the Milwaukee Diaper Mission, one of Jake’s newest Network of Hope partners. The program distributes disposable and reusable diaper and period product kits through a handful of community partners.

“The majority of the families we serve are Black and Latinx, and most are living well below the poverty line,” Meagan said. “Access to basic needs items was already difficult for these families, and the pandemic has made it even more of a challenge. Families are regularly having to choose between food or diapers, and government assistance programs do not offer diapering support. With 1 in 3 families struggling to afford diapers, and 1 in 4 menstruating individuals unable to afford period products, we are an essential organization for this city.”

Jake’s sent its first shipment to Milwaukee Diaper Mission in early 2021.

“We just received a large shipment today and we cannot wait to get them out into the community! Thank you so much for this amazing support,” Meagan said.