Last Saturday morning I had the pleasure of volunteering at the Catholic Charities Diaper Drive with Magdala and Angela. I truly hadn’t planned on attending until the extra email advertising the event was sent (my excuse was that I had too much homework to work on that weekend, but I thought I’d go anyway). I’m glad I did end up going, because not only was I able to meet another fellow Rose scholar, but I was also able to offer a hand for a few hours.

Our job was to basically unpack diaper boxes, remove them of their plastic coverings, and place a certain amount of diapers in separate bags, categorized by age. The last time I remember even smelling a diaper was maybe 12 years ago when my little brother was born, so the task did come with some welcome nostalgia. I honestly couldn’t tell you exactly how many boxes we unpacked in total, but according to Liddy, the woman running the event, we were able to package around 4,000 diapers in less than 3 hours! However, as Magdala and Angela informed me, babies can go through a lot of diapers in a day (shows you how much I know about kids). Regardless of the amount of diapers, I know a lot of families in Ithaca and the surrounding area benefit from this help. Even more exciting, I got to meet sweet little August (Liddy’s daughter). I have to admit, seeing August smile and giggle and packaging the diapers gave me somewhat of a “baby fever”, but I can assure you this won’t be happening for at least another decade and a half!

Overall, it was a rewarding experience, and I am definitely more willing to sign up for the volunteer events coming up. There are more or less 3,000 hours in a semester (forgive my math), and dedicating at least 4 hours toward helping someone can have a much greater impact than you think.