Fox News, October 2nd

BRANDON (FOX 13) -

Huggies, Pampers, store brand — you name it. If you have young kids, diapers are a must.

“People are having to choose between food and diapers for their families,” said Debi Rucker.

Rucker is a full-time working mother of two and delivers diapers in her spare time.

“We’re currently distributing between 7,000 and 8,000 diapers per month and we are barely scratching the surface.”

In January, Rucker created “Blessed Bottoms” — the first diaper bank in our area.

“I heard about the need for diapers in our community; the fact that they were not covered by programs such as food stamps and WIC,” Rucker explained.

She holds diaper drives, collects donations, whatever she can do to fill up her trunk.

“I’ve heard stories that people are re-using previously wet and soiled diapers and it frankly broke my heart.”

She delivers them to places like Life Care in Brandon.

“We were running out of diapers every month,” said Karen Brooks, the executive director of Life Care.

Life Care assists, on average, 300 pregnant women in need a month. That’s 75 packages of diapers a week.

“It’s a huge need,” Brooks continued. “When you think about an infant and how many diapers are used a day on a baby and how expensive diapers are.”

Debi makes as many stops as she can. Her trunk is often full of boxes, even cases, filled with 36, 56 or even 75 or more diapers.

But, she says, it’s an endless need.

LINK: www.blessedbottoms.org

By Libby Hopkins
September 16, 2012 from Osprey Observer
Osprey Observer 24 August 2012

In today’s society, more and more families are living in poverty because of the economy. When you think about ways to help these families, your first thoughts may be how to provide them with food or shelter, especially if they have babies or toddlers. You don’t think about providing the family with diapers.

Debi Rucker, founder and executive director of Blessed Bottoms in Brandon, has made it her job to see that families with infants or toddlers have enough diapers to make their children happy and healthy. Rucker started the organization after she had a talk with a neighbor about a diaper bank that the neighbor’s sister had started in Detroit.

“Once I heard about the critical need for diapers, I realized that there are no assistance programs that help pay for or provide diapers,” Rucker said. “I then thought about the impact on children that are not provided with a healthy supply of clean diapers.”

Blessed Bottoms was born. It is an organization based in Southeastern Hillsborough County. The purpose of Blessed Bottoms’ ministry is to show the love of Jesus by meeting some practical needs in the community. “We have an average distribution of 7,000 diapers a month and our focus area is Brandon, Lithia and Valrico,” Rucker said.

To sustain a clean and healthy life, a child will need up to 10 diapers a day. The cost for a family in poverty to diaper a child can be upwards of a $100 a month. Blessed Bottoms is fund completely by donations and Rucker would like to see the community get more involved with her ministry. “I want to urge the community to help by hosting diapers drives at their place of work, worship or school,” Rucker said.

The week of September 10-17 is Diaper Need Awareness Week. Rucker is looking for volunteers to host diaper drives or help organize fundraiser to bring in more donations. “As we raise awareness of this need, my hope is that we can get more people involved with wanting to help,” Rucker said.

To make a donation to Blessed Bottoms or learn more about the organization, visit www.blessedbottoms.org.

By Lilly Hopkins

By YVETTE C. HAMMETT| The Tampa Tribune
Published: August 15, 2012
Brandon News & Tribune 15 August 2012

LITHIA –

On any given week, Brandon’s group home for foster children runs through 400 to 600 diapers.

With 25 babies staying in the five homes at A Kid’s Place, the need is constant, said Mary Berg, the resource manager for the center that cares for sibling groups taken from their parents’ homes.

That same need is constant in homes across the greater Brandon area, where some parents struggle to pay for diapers that will keep their babies dry and comfortable throughout the day.

Debi Rucker had never really thought about the enormity of the need until she had a chat with a neighbor whose sister had started a diaper bank in Detroit.

“There are no government assistance programs that provide diapers,” said Rucker, who lives in FishHawk Trails and buys diapers by the case for her own son. “It’s not part of the WIC program, and you can’t buy them with food stamps.

“People struggle to put food on the table, and the baby ends up in wet diapers all day, with infection or at least irritable,” Rucker said. “A family already in stress is just put under more stress and prone to abuse.”

A few months later, in December, Rucker, a wife and the mother of two small boys, was stepping into the role of chief executive officer of the area’s first nonprofit diaper bank, which she named Blessed Bottoms.

A Kid’s Place is among her partners, along with the Seeds of Hope food bank at Lamb of God Lutheran Church in Lithia and Life Care Brandon, a help center for pregnant women in crisis.

“I found out that one in 20 moms have cleaned and reused disposable diapers,” Rucker said.

One in three mothers struggle to provide diapers for their babies.

“It hit me over the head that children out there did not have such a basic necessity of life,” Rucker said.

Starting a diaper bank was her way of addressing a community problem without sacrificing her primary role as a mom, she said. “It is something we can do as a family. They can learn the importance of serving others and running a business.”

So far, the community has come through for the diaper bank, collecting diapers during church services and making monetary donations — enough so that A Kid’s Place has been able to divert diaper funds to other needs for children, Berg said.

Working in conjunction with the National Diaper Bank Network in North Haven, Conn., Rucker has teamed with KIDS, Kids In Distressed Situations, to make connections and inspire others to start diaper banks in their communities.

“I’m focused on Lithia, Valrico and Brandon,” but the ultimate goal of the national bank is to start at least one diaper bank in all 50 states, the stay-at-home mom said. The national organization also provides resources such as webinars on grant writing and inventory management.

Rucker focuses on getting the diapers needed by her partners, then moving them out to the needy quickly. “I don’t keep an inventory,” she said.

After diaper drives, Rucker stores the white baby bottom covers in her double garage until she can arrange to deliver them. She recently accepted delivery of 8,000 diapers from Huggies and within a day had delivered more than half of them to her partners.

“What I’m hoping is to raise awareness in the community of the need. Most people don’t know how critical it is.”

She also hopes to add partners in the greater Brandon area as the diaper bank grows.

To date, Lamb of God, FishHawk Fellowship Church, the FishHawk Youth Baseball Traveling Team and FAST, FishHawk Area Service Team, from Bevis Elementary School have held diaper drives, and Rucker is seeking grants to buy more supplies.

“This is all 100 percent volunteer, and 100 percent of any donations go directly go diapers,” she said.

She also gets diapers from Huggies, which has pledged to give out 20 million diapers over three years through its Every Little Bottom campaign. Huggies is a founding sponsor of the National Diaper Bank Network.

To learn more or get a list of drop-off locations, visit www.blessedbottoms.org or call (813) 453-7610.

Contact the National Diaper Bank Network in North Haven, CT, at (203) 821-7348 or visit www.diaperbanknetwork.org