Local Group to Give Away Free Diapers Next Month Good Beginnings of Central Vermont will give away 268,800 free diapers next month

MONTPELIER – A local organization called Good Beginnings of Central Vermont will be giving away free diapers one day a month starting next month until all 268,800 diapers are gone from a storage facility owned by National Life Group.

On Friday the group received 28 pallets of chlorine-free diapers from an 18-wheeler that delivered the load to the donated storage facility. The diapers are factory seconds from the Burlington-based company Seventh Generation.

"This is the first time we've dealt with diapers," said a Good Beginnings co-founder, Sara Nevin.

Good Beginnings of Central Vermont is a non-profit organization that provides support to families with newborns and adopted babies in 15 towns. There are no income qualifications to receive the group's services of home-visits and resource networking or to take advantage of the free diapers.

The organization has been sending trained volunteers into homes with newborns and adopted babies since 1991. Volunteers visit one day a week for a few hours for up to three months.

"While we're in there we help them with whatever they need: dishes, floors, laundry, reading to siblings," Nevin said. "We work on bonding with families and child care and literacy."

The group provides a "welcome bag" that includes books, donated through the Children's Literacy Foundation.

"Each week when we read to the siblings the parents see the modeling, the excitement in the children's faces," Nevin said.

Good Beginnings has about 27 volunteers, each of whom is matched with families. The group is currently serving 100 of 300 families with newborns born at Central Vermont Medical Center each year, and they hope to increase that number by 30 percent each year.

The group is also known for providing baby carriers at cost, "snugglies" of several varieties and price ranges that are designed to promote bonding.

On Friday, Good Beginnings dispensed with three pallets containing 60 boxes of four packages of 40 diapers in each box to myriad groups including a battered women's shelter, head start and home health and hospice.

"We had a lot of services come by – food shelves, homeless shelters – we opened it up to all agencies," Nevin said.

The diapers, which are useable but not up to Seventh Generation company standards, were found to have hard spots where there shouldn't be any and would have ended up incinerated and converted into fuel, according to a company spokesperson.

"This presents a much better use for the diapers," said Seventh Generation spokesperson Christie Heimert.

The diapers – which are free of latex, fragrance and chlorine – are size 3, for babies 16-28 pounds.

The details of the monthly giveaway are still getting sketched out, but Nevin said her group plans to be at the National Life Annex on Three-mile Bridge Road on the first Tuesday of every month from 9-10:30 a.m. The warehouse is located just before Montpelier Junction, and anybody can come, including individuals.