Life is a balancing act, and as a parent, there is often an overwhelming number of balls to juggle. This is the way for many young moms in Stanwood, Washington, a diverse community about an hour north of Seattle.
Julie Fowler started as a young mom herself and remembers the struggles.
“I was a teenage mom and could not provide for my son myself in any way,” she said. “Along the way, different people would help us here and there and I realized that even the smallest bit of help could do for a struggling family. I now love to pay it forward as much as possible.”
She pays it forward through Cloth + Compassion, an organization she founded to provide cloth diapers to local and nonlocal families.
“We have many military families stationed here, several close cities are considered on the low-income level and we have a lot of self-proclaimed “crunchy moms” who strive to do what they can to protect and do their part in helping the environment,” she said. “The cost of living in our area is very high compared to other cities and states. Most families I know personally live paycheck to paycheck.”
Cloth and Compassion is still a small ministry and often has a bigger waitlist than supplies. When Julie came across the opportunity to partner with Jake’s Diapers, she was excited by the opportunity.
“When I first came into contact with Jake’s Diapers I had a waiting list of 5 different families I was unable to help because I had zero inventory and no funds to provide,” she said. “With that, Jake’s quickly helped by sending us enough diapers for all the families on the list, including one special family with a 5-year-old little boy with down syndrome who needed larger sized diapers. We, as a ministry, are so grateful and the families that received the diapers were blown away by the nice quality and amount of help they received! Since then, we have received several more boxes that helped us stock our shelves so we are ready to help more families in the near future! Also, the encouragement and kindness were so amazing and I couldn’t even put into words what it means to me.”
Julie said it has also been empowering to open the doors to cloth diapering to many families who don’t have the upfront investment available.
“By providing cloth diapers and accessories to use we eliminate that burden of the start-up costs as well,” she said. “We also provide support and education for using cloth and helping each family fully succeed in their cloth journey.”
About Our Diaper Drop Partners
Compassion+Cloth is just one of our many Diaper Drop partners Jake’s Diapers features regularly to shed light on the stories of the people we serve in order to increase awareness about the impact a donation of hygiene products can have on a single individual.