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.

Last Saturday, I helped out with a diaper drive at Catholic Charities. Despite the push by Dr. Hill to get more people to sign up, it ended up being just me, GRF Magdala, and one other Rose resident who went. Nevertheless, we had a good time doing what we could. Liddy, from Catholic Charities, was kind enough to let us in and meet her daughter August. We made our way into the basement, which was surprisingly big, and filled with lots of clothes and other donated items. While comfortable, the low exposed ceiling along with some small strange noises from time to time were a little creepy.

For the diaper drive, we divided up donated diapers into bags that would be handed out to low income parents once every two months. The number of diapers given out were based on the size, but even with the largest number of 52 size 1 diapers, we realized that this isn’t enough to keep up with an infant’s needs. Liddy mentioned that they also help low income parents by informing them of where else they could get free diapers.

Despite the fact that we only had three people, we got through over 4,000 diapers and pull-ups within 3 hours. Honestly, it was one of the most productive Saturday mornings I’ve had in a while, and it really was to help benefit those who need some support. While I think people may not have signed up to help because it was a Saturday morning and was supposed to be a relatively long event, I do think that people missed out. I would definitely do it again or even help out with other activities they need volunteers for. I really encourage other Rose Scholars to be more open minded about even rarely spending a chunk of their weekends to dedicate to some service activity. Who knows, you might learn somethings about diapers you never knew that might come up sometime later in your life.