GALESBURG — In 2004, Loving Bottoms founder LeeAnn Porter was living in Kentucky. She says she was coming out of an abusive relationship, and was going through a divorce. As a single mom with three children — the youngest only 6 months old — she found herself under immense financial strain.
While her landlord helped her receive assistance through WIC and other programs, things remained a challenge. Porter said food was not a huge difficulty, and she was able to cook, but other things like laundry soap, dish soap and diapers were a problem. When she asked the people at the pantries about these things, they looked at her like they did not know why she needed them.
"I internalized that as nobody else must be having this problem," Porter says now. "I must not be figuring something out, I'm failing."
But Porter was not alone. Her struggle paying for diapers was a common one, and one that she is now helping address in the community with the not-for-profit diaper bank Loving Bottoms.
Porter says a pre-pandemic study found that one in three families experience diaper need, unable to afford all the diapers they need to change their kids as much as is needed. This averages out to a gap of about 50 diapers a month. Monthly diaper costs can be between $70 and $80, which Porter notes is about the same cost as her water bill.
Porter found financial stability when she found work, moved back to Illinois and remarried, and in September of 2015, she found a way to help address the needs of others, launching Loving Bottoms Diaper Bank from her home. Less than five years later, the not-for-profit distributed its millionth diaper.
Porter says Loving Bottoms now helps about 800 families a month, trying to fill that diaper gap for families in need. Its work extends beyond Galesburg, with eight west-central Illinois counties now relying on its diaper bank in some capacity.
"For every one of these families, it's huge," Porter said.
She says having access to diapers helps families focus on other needs, giving them one less thing to grapple over.
They have also been able to expand their supply over the years to more than just diapers. They started receiving incontinence products and period supplies from donors, and now help provide those services as well to those in need.
They have also begun servicing younger infants than usual after being put in touch with a Peoria-based program that identifies families in need at hospitals after childbirth.
"They're catching families from day one, before families go home, that will possibly be struggling to afford diapers," Porter said.
As a result, they have seen a new need for newborn diapers.
Loving Bottoms had grown to distributing 18,000 or so diapers a month before the pandemic began, but when the shelter-in-place order was issued last year in Illinois, the need more than doubled.
They now distribute about 40,000 diapers a month, but Porter says this number still is not meeting all of the needs found in Knox County and its surrounding communities.
Porter hopes operations at the diaper bank will continue to ramp up. In Loving Bottoms' first year, they gave away 33,000. In 2020, they worked with 26 partner organizations to distribute more than 500,000. They expect to exceed that number again this year. Porter hopes they will be able to ramp that up over time to a million diapers a year.
Porter says she never felt that the diaper bank would grow so big. If she had known that it would have grown so big, she is not sure she would have had the confidence to start it.
"The diaper bank has helped me regain my voice, so I can be a voice for other people," she said. "I really thought it was going to be a Galesburg thing, so I'm thankful that it grew the way that it did in little steps and pieces because it allowed me to grow alongside it."
Continuing to grow will not be without its challenges, and the diaper bank needs the help of volunteers and donors in order to keep functioning.
Donations can be given monetarily at Lovingbottoms.org, and diapers can also be directly donated by sending them to 3021 W. Main St. in Galesburg, or dropping them off at one of multiple ambassador locations in Galesburg, Monmouth, Kewanee, and Peoria. More information can be found at the Loving Bottoms website.
Volunteers can sign up to volunteer their time at the Loving Bottoms warehouse at lovingbottoms.org/volunteer.
Finally, those in need of diaper assistance can go through various partner agencies. West-central Illinoisans can go to Lovingbottoms.org/diapers to see what nearby agencies are able to help.
March 15, 2021 at 06:00AM
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Illinois mom turned need into diaper challenge; Loving Bottoms distributes millionth diaper - Quad City Times
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