The Wilkins family donated roughly 5,000 individual diapers to the Chesterfield County Diaper Drive last year. The family hopes to donate 6,000 diapers this year.

As the coronavirus pandemic raged on last March, the Wilkins family in Chesterfield County lent a helping hand and donated roughly 5,000 individual diapers to the annual county diaper drive.

Mary Wilkins’ children — Emmett, 8; Maya, 6; and Anna, 2 — are spearheading this year’s donation efforts once again as the family seeks to donate 6,000 diapers. Handmade signs will soon reappear in their Lake Genito neighborhood, coupled with social media campaigns and phone banking.

“I think it kind of hit home to them since they had a little baby sister, they care about their community and a lot of their friends have little baby siblings, and so I think it just connected with them,” Wilkins said in an interview on behalf of her children.

Kicking off the ninth annual diaper drive this month, Chesterfield is looking to surpass its record level of donations received last year: 47,000 individual diapers and 512 packages of wipes.

Chesterfield-Colonial Heights Families First and Infant & Toddler Connection of Chesterfield, two county Department of Mental Health Support Services programs, are collecting diapers sizes newborn to 6 years old, pullups and baby wipes.

“Our goal is to collect diapers that we would then be able to use to support families in all our programs throughout the following year,” said Ashley Rogers, Families First program coordinator, in an interview. “We’re not the sole provider of diapers for families enrolled in our program, [rather] it’s a added support for families when there’s a crisis or an increased need for a short period of time.”

According to the National Diaper Bank Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring every child in America has access to enough diapers, even before the pandemic, 1 in 3 families struggled to afford diapers.

Approximately 5 million infants and toddlers live in poverty, while public aid programs such as food stamps and Women, Infants and Children (WIC), a supplemental nutrition program, do not cover the cost of diapers.

Infants, for example, require up to 12 diapers per day, which costs between $70 and $80 a month per baby, according to the nonprofit.

Last March, Kimberly-Clark raised the price of Huggies diapers, a household staple, followed by Procter & Gamble hiking the price on baby care products, including Pampers six months later.

During the pandemic, diaper donation requests have increased by 500%, while diaper costs grew 10% during the same time, according to Baby2Baby, a nonprofit that provides diapers to children in poverty.

On a local level, Leslie Pakula, Chesterfield’s infant program manager, has seen the increased need for diapers among families in the past few years.

“I think part of that [increased need] is there was a two-income family and now there’s a one-income family,” Pakula said in an interview. “Diapers is just that extra thing that’s super expensive.”

Due to a mix of rising inflation and the continued demand for diapers, the Chesterfield agencies are looking to the communities of Chesterfield and Colonial Heights to help break last year’s record of collected diapers.

To assist with the diaper drive, neighborhood associations, local businesses, fraternities and sororities, and churches are encouraged to host individual diaper drives this month.

So far, the Wilkinses have received $100 in donations to purchase diapers, plus two large cases and six individual packs of diapers. Emmett, Maya and Anna will also help fund some diaper purchases from their piggy banks.

The Chesterfield diaper drive runs through March. To coordinate donations, interested groups, businesses and individuals should contact Rogers at rogersa@chesterfield.gov; or Pakula at pakulal@chesterfield.gov.

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The Wilkins family donated roughly 5,000 individual diapers to the Chesterfield County Diaper Drive last year. The family hopes to donate 6,000 diapers this year.

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