My Life As a Diaper Bank Outsider
A reintroduction.
My name is Wendy, and I run the Brooklyn Diaper Project. This post is a re-introduction of our project for new followers and supporters. It’s also a reacquaintance for our longer-term followers so they can make sure they’re in the right place.
I also run a kelp project, which is pretty random and not related to diapers at all. (Or IS it.)
I have a graduate degree in Cognitive Studies in Education. Advocacy work, in its purest form, is all about making thinking visible. Thinking closely about where the knowledge gaps are- what people need to know and what people need to examine or reexamine. Then delivering on those: not just on re-hashings of what’s been done, but committing to illustrations of possibility. Learning is defined as a ‘change in understanding’ — and there’s a lot of change that needs to happen in our country about how people understand diaper banks and diaper need. I was never drawn to education for the dream of standing in front of rows of desks, filling children’s heads with facts presented as static truth, clock ticking overhead. I’m an educator in the field of life- for all ages- because I am drawn to the specific kind of creativity and adaptation to urgent, ever-evolving issues- where you must be willing to abandon everything you thought you understood.
When I started this project 4 years ago, I thought to myself “Wow- what if I could give away a million diapers- think of how many people that would help!” We started in the thick of the pandemic by direct-shipping individual boxes of diapers to families who couldn’t leave their homes- a couple hundred diapers per month. We then started ordering by the pallet, storing diapers temporarily in a warehouse. Then we found a way to bypass the expensive costs of both retail storefronts and warehouses- we now deliver directly to the 5 partner organizations we currently serve.
We’re a small team of 3: two part-timers to cover communications and operations, and me, a full-time unpaid volunteer. No Instagrammable volunteer opportunities; no galas or t-shirts. Just diapers. And not unsustainably made ones, either- we stick to environmentally conscious choices. Currently, that’s Bambo.
I’m over halfway through the million-diaper-goal, and I’ve become annoyed with the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed version of me that thought a million diapers amounted to anything at all. The old me held the assumption that I’d be participating in a system that had turned over every stone to provide the very best for families. After swimming around for a few years in the soupy rhetoric of diaper banks, diaper manufacturers, and community leaders, I now stand horrified as a participant in a broken, farcical system where everyone is asleep. And complicit.
Identity problem
“But don’t you RUN a diaper bank? What is your problem, anyway?” Yes- but I don’t want to be. This project has always had an identity problem. Philanthropic and corporate forces that support this system of diaper banks (which, by the way, are showing no signs of beginning to catch up to the ever-growing need) need to be thrown out and replaced with something better.
Whether or not this is convenient for you to realize, nonprofits and diaper banks are just as money-hungry to grow bigger and fatter as corporations are.
A couple of years ago, I kicked myself out of what I’d come to think of as the Cool Kids’ Club of Diaper Banks (NDBN). When I was a member, I got into the gentlest of trouble with them because they didn’t like it when I likened diaper banks (like myself) to a band-aid in a social media post. (I hated the feeling of being in trouble as kid, so I took down the offending post- but I stand by my position.) I let my membership fee lapse, and now I feel more free to say what I’m thinking. The main perk of belonging was discounted access to unsustainably made diapers (I don’t enjoy being a snob, okay?- I just refuse to accept the alternative) - an idea that never sat right with me to begin with. So here I sit, wholly incapable of playing well with others- on the lonely curb. I regularly wake up to feelings of self-doubt: “Am I missing something? Is there something I’ve gotten completely, totally wrong about my outlook on diaper banks?” and then I remember to compare the stats on how need is outpacing diaper banks’ ever-growing coffers, and I remember the critical component of what they’re missing — independence for families- and I wave away the doubt to come back another time.
I believe that diapers should be as available and affordable as clean water (before water became a profitable industry). This belief stands in direct conflict with every self-preserving goal of any nonprofit, which is to make money in order to purchase toxic, plastic, cheap diapers- thereby controlling the flow of what’s needed, consciously or not. There are nonprofits out there (I know this firsthand) who like to stem the flow of the aid they have in order to ‘maximize impact’ on their annual reports. If you only give 1 diaper each to 100 families, that’s a higher demonstration of impact to your donors than 100 diapers to 1 family. Think about that for a minute. Is any diaper bank’s Board of Directors incentivized toward families achieving hygiene independence? The gala donations would dry up!
But alas: we’re a diaper bank because I know in the short term, that’s what needs to happen. Families rely on us. I can’t just stop and pontificate on the theoretical. I have to do both at the same time. It all feels so very silly. Paying a for-profit company to distribute something that should be as accessible as toilet paper in public restrooms? It’s ridiculous. Even more ridiculous: I don’t think there’s another soul out there besides me who is even questioning all this. Everyone around me is busy shoring up the systems in place to fill the gaps as quickly as they can.
Almost more important than buying and distributing diapers (which admittedly is all this project does- it’s quite boring), is my insistence that we change the conversation: disrupting the massive mechanical wheels of industrialization, philanthropy, and corporations that all play a hand (however unknowingly) in perpetuating this ever-growing problem. Yes, I meant what I said there.
It’s worth noting here that, for some discount diaper brands, diaper banks are not insignificant sales clients. I want there to be a delineation between corporate for-profit brands and nonprofit services, but I don’t see one.
I’m the only one who doesn’t see this as an issue to be ended- it needs to be solved. My opinion is not popular. Nonprofits and city leaders are more than a little reluctant to side with me on this. The feeling isn’t unlike walking into my doctor’s office: she wants to prescribe medication for the ailment, and I just want to talk about why and how I got there in the first place, and how to undo it. Western societies don’t speak ‘root cause.’ It’s a foreign language.
Here’s a recap of why I think we’re great. Some of you are just getting to know us- for others, a quick refresher:
We think mutual aid is a really important component of strengthening communities- for diaper access and everything. It has been harder to implement mutual aid in all of the places we were hoping to, but we still believe in it and we have a successful model currently running as part of our program.
We’re a small, efficient team. Your donations go toward buying diapers. The end.
Our messaging and program don’t have any strings attached: no donor strings, no grant strings- like other nonprofits do. This means we get to say what we mean and do what we want. And you can see it in all the differences between more established projects and us.
We’re not messing around. We’ve given away half a million diapers so far. Our partner organizations cite our diapers as ‘the most’ or ‘the second most’ important part of their programming for the families they serve.
We expect you to expect more for yourself and your neighbors.
We want you to believe in your heart of hearts that diapers (and period products) should be easy and affordable to access. This is a radical concept. It shouldn’t be.
We want you to reject the idea that for-profit companies and diaper banks should control how affordable and accessible diapers are.
We think you should know that diaper drives and diaper banks are the currently accepted mechanisms for mitigating diaper need, but they are not the solution. The thinking that we’ve arrived at the solution and that diaper banks ‘have this issue covered’ is false and ultimately putting families in harm’s way.
Diapers are currently made out of the dumbest materials imaginable. Plastics. Chemicals. Land-based commodities that require pesticides and fresh water to grow. They should be locally made and composed of entirely different materials: ones that grow passively without any resources, like kelp and oysters. Anyone claiming that we should use land-based materials for commodities like this is flat wrong. Yeah- come at me.
We’re tired of playing nice.
I’m calling out diaper companies. They work for profits, not people — and they’re in the driver’s seat. They’re not very nice, either: they’ve laughed at my Zoom face and told me that I will fail at manufacturing diapers. I’ve heard laughter is also a sign of anxiety.
I’m calling out the people who are working to ‘change policy’ to ease the sting of diaper need. Is a tax cut for diapers really going to solve this problem? Or will the diaper manufacturers simply use this progress as an excuse to raise their prices even more? We all need to be working toward independence.
I’m calling out city leaders. Elected officials in NYC are true posers. They pose in front of other people’s projects, thank them for their work, and then move on. When you ask them to actually contribute something real that isn’t related to a photo op, they evaporate. One city council leader once agreed to “put a box under her desk” to collect diapers as a diaper drive. How pathetic is that? They host baby showers for nonprofits to come set up shop and distribute their aid, and all the leader does is invite the press to come take a photo. Also. Participatory Budgeting is an absolute scam. Email me if you want more details.
Last but not least, I’m calling YOU out, reader: you, who have reached the end of this post, scrolling your feed, someone who cares about diaper need and period product access but who is just going to move on to the next thing. Maybe it’s because you don’t know how. Share this post. Call your rep and demand that hygiene products need to be free and locally made. Put them on the spot. Make them squirm. Stop waiting for the Goldilocks moment. Tape signs in public restrooms and stand outside of city leader office doors with big signs that say “Diapers and period products should be free in all restrooms.” Contact us for more volunteer ideas. Set up a mutual aid box where you are- at your church or school. As Michelle Obama said in her recent DNC speech: do something.
