Baby2Baby On-the-Go Program Expansion

1 in 3 families in this country were already choosing between diapers and food before the pandemic, and now the families that Baby2Baby serves are struggling even more due to a year of lost income, millions of lost jobs and increased lack of access to these critical items. The moms and dads we serve have resorted to making homemade diapers out of newspapers. Some of them are watering down their baby formula to make it last longer and skipping meals to pay for these essential items. To put this increased need into perspective, in the first month of our COVID-19 relief, we distributed 350% more diapers than the month prior. We now have 731 million diaper requests – a startling 505% increase – showing the deeper effects of the pandemic. When Baby2Baby can supply these critical items like diapers and formula through our distributions across Los Angeles County, families can use their extremely limited funds to focus on food, shelter, and keeping their kids healthy and safe.

Things are getting increasingly worse, not better, for the families we serve. One year into the crisis, high poverty neighborhoods are still impacted by COVID-19 on a staggeringly different scale than more affluent areas. In California, families living in poverty have double the number of COVID case rates with half the number of vaccines being administered. Even before the pandemic began, these families were already living in an everyday crisis. A year later 8 million people, including 2.3 million children, have fallen into poverty for the first time in the US, and more children across Los Angeles County are relying on Baby2Baby than ever before. Prior to COVID-19, our main mode of distribution was an in-person shopping model, where thousands of social workers and authorized staff would access our headquarters to pick up essential items for the children in their programs. Due to increased safety measures, Baby2Baby implemented a delivery only method of distribution during this pandemic and stopped allowing any social workers to shop or pick up on site. As a result of this distribution mode shift, Baby2Baby has made deliveries to hundreds of organizations spanning school districts, homeless shelters, health clinics, foster care, hospitals and more. Baby2Baby On-the-Go - our mobile distribution program - now consists of two freight trucks, and four couriers getting as many items as possible to children in need, seven days a week.

Expand existing project, program, or initiative

When Baby2Baby can supply these critical items like diapers and formula through our distributions across Los Angeles County, families can use their extremely limited funds to focus on food, shelter, and keeping their kids healthy and safe. The expansion of Baby2Baby On-the-Go will allow us to increase our mobile distribution program to reach a goal of 15,000 additional children living in poverty by removing the challenges that have prevented access to basic essentials for the most underserved and remote communities in Los Angeles County.

Baby2Baby On-the-Go is an existing program, and has become our primary mode of distribution to get essential items into the hands of children living in poverty across LA. Baby2Baby now makes deliveries to over 450 partner organizations, representing all SPAs across LA County - up from 257 partners before the pandemic began. Our LA COVID-19 Relief has reached 423,436 children in Los Angeles, and our requests continue to grow by the day. To put the increased need in perspective we have seen the following increases in requests - diapers: 120,750,011 in 2020 to 731,248,560 in 2021 - formula: 52,123 in 2020 to 6,159,822 in 2021 - school supplies: 7,008,950 in 2020 to 20,912,950 in 2021 - blankets: 79,508 in 2020 to 1,095,340 in 2021 The LA 2050 Grant would help Baby2Baby meet the need that is increasing every day by stocking our truck for 15 additional distributions across 4 target SPAs allowing Baby2Baby to reach over 15,000 of the most vulnerable children living in poverty in LA.