Donate your spare nappies this Mother's Day and help mums in need…

This Mother’s Day we are asking mums to give their spare nappies to others in need, writes mum Aliza Denenberg from The Nappy Collective.

This is the fourth nappy collection in Sydney and it’s been incredible to see The Nappy Collective concept grow. As part of the committee, I’ve been contacting Sydney charities to see who needs the nappies most. We’re talking to a young women’s program, foster care agencies, as well as women’s refuges where people are escaping domestic violence. We’re also looking towards asylum seekers and refugees because apparently they have a huge need for nappies.

Disposable nappies can be a huge financial burden on parents, particularly those struggling to make ends meet. Each nappy is valued at about 32 cents, and so if you think about it, my two-year-old son, for example, goes through about four a day, and newborns use about ten, so the dollars really add up.

I like knowing I can help other mothers through a hard time in their lives. It’s difficult to imagine how these mothers feel, but we at The Nappy Collective just want to relieve some of that stress for them so they can start rebuilding their lives.

The concept for The Nappy Collective came to founder Sandra Jacobs while she was doing volunteer work at a Melbourne women’s refuge. After seeing mothers in times of crisis struggling to provide the basic needs of their babies and toddlers, Sandra was motivated to do something to help. She had a few spare nappies her daughter had grown out of at home and was wondering what she could do with them. She soon realised lots of people probably have some leftover unused nappies in the car or at a grandparent’s house, and if she could get them all together and donate them to women’s shelters it would be a big help for mums in need. You can hear more of Sandra’s story in the video below.

In October 2013, Sandra organised The Nappy Collective’s first drive for unwanted nappies, collecting 1500 nappies at a single drop point in Melbourne. Her simple concept has inspired a growing community of like-minded Mums, who have since extended the collective to 18 Australian cities. In October 2014, the volunteer network collected and distributed 116,000 nappies to families in need.

Aliza and The Nappy Collective team working hard at last year’s collection…

The call to action is really simple – give us your leftover unused nappies and we’ll pass them on to a family in crisis. Donating a few leftover nappies actually feels great when you know that they are going directly to a family in real hardship.

Just drop your nappy donation at the nearest designated collection points (below) during the collection period, 1-15 May. At the end of the two week collective the nappies are sorted, packed and swiftly distributed to organisations that support families in crisis or in need.

North Shore Mums can donate nappies at the following local collection points.