See Beautiful Grant Applicant: Helping Mamas

The feature below is brought to you by Helping Mamas, an organization that is in the running to receive a See Beautiful Grant. For more information about our giving initiatives, please click here.
 
To learn more about the featured organization, please visit their website here.

Filling the gap by helping mama

Helping Mamas began as a labor of love by two social workers and moms. After 15 years in the social service field, its founders noticed a huge gap in services. This gap was preventing families from being able to move out of poverty, feel confident in their parenting skills, or provide the most basic needs for their children. Prior to Helping Mamas, there was no coordinated effort to collect and distribute essential infant and child items in the metro Atlanta area. Diapers, wipes, car seats, and cribs are critical to the health and safety of children but are often the most expensive items to purchase. These items cannot be purchased through Public Assistance Programs like WIC and SNAP. 3 in 5 moms in the United States have to choose between diapers and food for their children. Without an adequate supply of diapers, children cannot attend early childhood education programs. Without childcare, parents often cannot work. This gap in services keeps families stuck in the diaper gap and unable to see the beauty of being a parent. If a parent is constantly worried about providing for their child’s most needs, they are unable to stop and feel the joy of parenting. Helping Mamas was formed to provide these essential basic needs to families and to ensure that equitable access to these items is protected.

The mission of Helping Mamas is to connect helping mamas to mamas in need of help. Our goal is to ensure that all mothers and children with limited financial means have the basic needs they need to live well. We collect and distribute essential infant and child items to organizations that serve women and children in need.  We served over 30,000 women and children in 2019 and nearly 65,000 in 2020. We work with over 150 social service agencies and hospitals that serve economically-disadvantaged women and children, and acquired 30 additional partner agencies in 2020. These organizations list basic baby supplies, like diapers and wipes, as their main need. We are also on a mission to provide period products to women and girls who are often vulnerable to miss up to a week of work or school due to a lack of these basic hygiene items.

A new study on access to period products has found that this lack of access can also put women and girls at greater risk of depression, anxiety, and further financial barriers. Of those who have experienced period poverty, nearly two-thirds said they lack confidence because of harassment at school and experience high anxiety and depression. We already know that lack of access to menstrual products can keep people from going to school or work, prevent them from accessing opportunities, and perpetuate homelessness, but these new findings show how far-reaching the impacts of period poverty really may be.

We recently launched our Mobile Program this year after hosting a successful donation drive campaign in 2020. Our Mobile Program has allowed us to serve thousands more women and children across the state of Georgia thus far. We have been able to host biweekly distribution events since the program launched, reaching Gwinnett, Dekalb, Lowndes, Muscogee, and several other counties!

Our team was thrilled to learn of the See Beautiful grant and to be invited to apply! Funding from See Beautiful would allow us to create more ways to collect and distribute period products to the women we serve.  Our partner agencies, donors, and volunteers help us see beauty through their service every day. Without them, our work would not be possible. We want to create an efficient and meaningful way for our partner agencies to acquire the products they need to support women and girls in our community.  With the support and products they need, we hope they are able to see the beauty in themselves as well.

Submitted by: Bemsi Wallang
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