A Baby Bundle project is underway at the Interfaith Food Bank thanks to Akshara Nagaruru, a local recipient of a $1,500 Community Foundation “Youth in Action” grant. The Winston Churchill Grade 12 student’s initiative will help support infants and pregnant mothers who access the Baby Bundle program. Once the project is completed, a Baby Bundle Drive and fundraiser will commence.
“Babies eat differently than adults do,” says Danielle McIntyre, executive director at Interfaith. “We need to recruit baby specific foods and supplies to support families in ensuring our most vulnerable citizens start off on the right foot.”
Baby Bundles include five to seven days of appropriate baby food and supplies for infants up to one year of age. In addition to ensuring parents have appropriate foods for little ones, the food bank also distributes diapers, formula and other supplies to parents when they access emergency food assistance. The program also provides support to mothers from pregnancy through to the child’s first birthday.
“We know when it’s hard enough to provide the basics, it’s not likely parents can afford all of the extras they’d like to have for their babies, which is why community support for the Baby Bundle program is so vital,” adds McIntyre.
“To see a young person like Akshara take the time to put on a Baby Bundle Drive is inspiring,” McIntyre notes. Nagaruru also volunteers at seniors homes and the Lethbridge Food Bank.
After volunteering at a medical detox unit, Nagaruru found several participants trying to improve their lives by overcoming addiction were parents of young children or infants, many of whom were unemployed and struggling financially.
Nagaruru hopes to help young mothers, as well as pregnant women struggling financially through the initiative. “Through that, creating bundles along with my friends.” The high school students prepared the bundles this week.
Each month, Interfaith distributes close to 50 hampers, which includes baby food, formula milk and “more generic things definitely of great use to these families,” says Nagaruru.
“I wanted to help buy supplies that would help each of these 50 families and buy as much as we could with that money,” says Nagaruru. Some of the supplies not already provided in the Baby Bundle program were bibs, soothers and milk bottles.