Diapers are a basic need.
It Takes a Village Diaper Bank believes all children have the right to a clean and dry diaper at all times. Our mission is to make sure that no family in Oneida, Madison and Herkimer counties go without the diapers they need to raise the next generation healthy and happy.
What is diaper need?
Diaper need is when families do not have the resources to supply all the diapers their babies need in a month. Pre-pandemic, 1 in 3 families experienced diaper need. In the pandemic, the need has grown dramatically.
What is a diaper bank?
To put it simply, a diaper bank is like a food bank, but with diapers! We supply diapers on a monthly basis to families that visit us.
Why do we need a diaper bank?
Public assistance programs do not cover diapers leaving countless families struggling to find a way to cover this basic need. The closest diaper bank is in Syracuse and over an hour away from our families. It Takes a Village Diaper Bank was created to step up and fill this essential need.
Our Story
It Takes a Village Diaper Bank started with a church wide diaper drive among Waterville & Park United Methodist in April 2020. At Waterville, we put any diapers we collected in our Blessing Box. We really didn’t know much about diaper need, but we knew whenever we put diapers in the box they were gone within hours.
One of our founding diaper bank members, Lyndsey, brought up the idea of starting a diaper bank. None of us truly thought that was even within the realm of what we could do in a small little church in a small little town. So, we instead decided to find 5 families that experienced diaper need and commit to helping them. And in June 2020 we began It Takes a Village Diaper Bank!
Five months later, we decided it was time to take another step and held a village “Diaper Dump”. We hung up flyers everywhere we could to ask our neighbors to donate a pack of diapers. It was a test of faith, we really didn’t know if this was something our village would be excited about. But, we were overwhelmed on the day of the “Diaper Dump” with over 2,000 diapers from our little village!
Since that day, our diaper bank has continued to grow! We now host monthly diaper distributions, in partnership with Waterville Public Library, where we distribute diapers, baby wipes, feminine hygiene products, baby clothes/items, winter jackets, and more to families in over 25 towns! Along with these monthly diaper distributions, we work with agency partners to distribute diapers directly to organizations.
