A ‘Baby Supply Bank’ Born Out of Labor of Love

Jeannie Jaybush’s office is an 8-by-10-foot basement space. Her wages couldn’t be worse: no pay for the last 12 years. But she loves her full-time job as founding director of Seattle’s Baby Corner.

It’s the emotional perks that keep her going, knowing that through her efforts, Seattle’s poor are receiving more than $1 million worth of diapers, formula, baby food, clothing and other essentials each year.

It was early December 1988 when Jaybush, 46, got the idea for Baby Corner. A newspaper report had shaken her: The year before, nearly 2,000 Seattle infants and children younger than 5 were homeless. The infant mortality rate in Seattle’s poorest communities rivaled that of Third World countries. Just 2 miles from Jaybush’s church, children were starving, and some, she learned, were dying.

“I couldn’t do big things like world peace,” Jaybush said. “But I could do lots of little things, and little things add up.”

Jaybush, a stay-at-home mother of three young boys, approached the administrator of her church, St. Joseph’s Parish, with a modest request. For Christmas, could she set out a box behind the communion railing for parishioners’ donations of baby supplies? Other churches had food banks and clothing banks, she explained, but St. Joseph’s could have a “baby supply bank.” Jaybush then asked her pastor, Peter Byrne, to make announcements about the box from his pulpit.

“I told him, ‘Look, it’s a win-win situation for you,’ ” she said. “ ‘If it flies, you get the credit. If it flops, I’ll take the blame.’ We had no idea what we were getting into.”

To Jaybush’s joy, families began bringing baby supplies to church. But even after Christmas, the donation box continued to attract contributions. So, at another parishioner’s urging, Jaybush swapped the box for a classier collection receptacle--a baby crib--which also filled with diapers, clothing, formula and other goods.

However, Jaybush’s efforts took a somber turn when a social worker contacted her, seeking supplies. On a cold Washington day, the social worker told her, a homeless mother had given birth in an alley. She had been discovered on the streets, carrying her 4-day-old infant and clutching her other child’s hand. The placenta and umbilical cord were still attached.

“She had no coat,” Jaybush said. “The baby had no clothes, pajamas, blanket--nothing.”

Jaybush launched a call to action, and St. Joseph’s parishioners responded. They arrived for mass laden with diapers, blankets and clothing for the baby.

News circulated about Jaybush’s unique service, and she began receiving calls from city government employees and hospital workers about other families in desperate need. Department of Public Health workers told Jaybush that during their rounds to the homes of Seattle’s poor they often encountered families lacking soap, clothing, formula and diapers for their young, Jaybush said. Mothers were diapering their babies in towels, sheets and old shirts because they couldn’t afford anything else.

“For them, it’s between diapers and the rent, diapers and food, diapers and medicine,” Jaybush said.

One nurse called Jaybush from her hospital’s emergency room. A 14-month-old boy had been brought in because his diaper hadn’t been changed in three days. He had developed a blood-borne infection and was on intravenous fluids because his mother couldn’t afford diapers.

The incident still stirs Jaybush’s emotions. “Come on. We’re supposed to be a civilized society,” she said. “This shouldn’t be happening here.”

Haunted by the deprivations, Jaybush took more action. “I had to put my work where my mouth was,” she said. “Because my feeling is, you have a responsibility to do something. If you’re not contributing, you’re part of the problem.”

Her husband, Brian, a Qwest telephone technician, continued to support their family on his modest wages as Jaybush settled in for what was about to be a “more-than-full-time” job. She recruited volunteers to assist her, fielded calls from local agencies and shelters, spent afternoons filling out paperwork and donation receipts and stepped up her donation drives.

On weekends, she inventoried supplies and placed them in a storage area at St. Joseph’s, where they’d await pickup by social workers who’d distribute them to poor families. Jaybush handled these requisitions too. She did her work in the only space then available to her--a windowless, closet-size area behind the furnace in her church’s basement.

“She takes this very, very seriously,” said Suraya Hanna, a maternity social worker at Province Family Medical Center in Seattle. “It’s like it’s her own kids. She can be a taskmaster, expecting you to be on time. But she wants this to have meaning. She doesn’t just fill needs; she asks about the people, what else they might use. And, based on what she finds out, she gives gifts.”

By early 1990, Jaybush, through St. Joseph’s “Baby Corner,” had collected more than $60,000 in baby supplies. Three years later, that figure rose to $300,000 annually. Her idea was catching on. Other Seattle parishes and synagogues set up their own Baby Corners. They then brought their donations to Jaybush’s Baby Corner, which began serving as an ad hoc distribution center.

Within a few years, 60 agencies were using Jaybush’s services, including Washington’s Child Protective Services, Washington State’s and King County’s public health departments, hospitals, medical clinics, shelters, public defenders, drug rehabilitation services, and food and clothing banks.

Eventually, Jaybush’s parish priest acknowledged that Jaybush was receiving more calls than St. Joseph’s entire staff. The two agreed she should have her own phone line and, more important, additional office space. An 8-by-10-foot area was cleared in the basement for Jaybush’s Baby Corner operations.

The horror stories of people in need continued, though. An 11-year-old girl, abandoned by her parents and now living on the streets as a prostitute, had just given birth. She had nothing for her newborn. Jaybush did all she could: She provided the girl with diapers, pajamas, a blanket, a baby hat, a bag, bottles, formula, a can opener, a pacifier and a brush. But when the 11-year-old was discharged from the hospital with her newborn, “she disappeared,” Jaybush said. “We never heard from her again.”

A 15-year-old new mother was sleeping on the floor of an apartment, with her infant and a 4-month-old Rottweiler beside her. Jaybush quickly located a portable crib.

A Seattle couple were about to be evicted from their apartment. Their baby had just died from sudden infant death syndrome, and the husband had been docked pay for missing work to bury his child. Jaybush raised $300 so they could stay in their home.

Then there was the out-of-town mother, nine months pregnant, who said she had caught her spouse raping their 2-year-old daughter. The woman rushed the hemorrhaging toddler to a hospital, then, upon the child’s release, boarded a plane to Seattle, “knowing absolutely nobody here,” Jaybush said. The little girl was crying hysterically; her favorite doll had been left behind at home.

A Baby Corner volunteer located a doll like the toddler’s. Jaybush rounded up supplies to be sent to the shelter where the woman and her daughter were staying.

Though Jaybush hasn’t advertised Baby Corner’s services even after several years, word has traveled nationally. Representatives from organizations in other states often ask Jaybush how they can help. But Jaybush holds rigid beliefs about donations: She tells potential contributors that their locally collected resources should remain with their own communities.

“We don’t want to take other cities’ resources away from them,” she said. “Our city has enough to take care of its own, if it gets its act together. Each community needs to raise its own resources to care for its poor.”

Two months ago, the Internal Revenue Service granted Baby Corner 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, Jaybush said. More than 350 organizations across America are sponsoring drives like that of Baby Corner.

Jaybush’s volunteers now number more than 100 and include a healthy percentage of seniors. “The first rule was no meetings,” said Jaybush, who communicates with the “Baby SWAT Team,” as she calls it, via phone lines and e-mail. “The politics, the problems. Meetings are toxic to people’s health.”

Her work is only beginning. According to a recent report in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, infant mortality in King County’s high-poverty areas is increasing.

“You can learn a lot about a society by the way it takes care of its most vulnerable people, the very old and the very young,” Jaybush said. “We’re not doing a very good job.

“I was raised that faith without work is a sin. Tell me what you do, and I’ll tell you what you believe.”

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Four Ways to Contribute

Twelve years ago, Jeannie Jaybush founded Baby Corner in Seattle to provide the city’s poor with supplies that would help them feed, clothe and care for their children. What started out as a part-time endeavor has become “more than a full-time job” for Jaybush, who says she loves her work. Here she offers tips for readers who’d like to make a difference at work in the lives of poor families:

1. When on business trips, save the freebies--soaps, shampoos, toothpaste--that you’re given by clients and hotels. Donate these to local agencies that assist low-income families.

2. Don’t throw out unused food and beverages at your workplace. Find a soup kitchen near your office and offer to contribute these items regularly.

3. If your company produces merchandise that can make poor families’ lives easier (or more enjoyable), consider donating extras, returns and imperfect goods to an agency that can distribute them to the needy.

4. Start a “Baby Corner” in your office. Set up a big box and ask employees to contribute diapers, baby supplies, blankets--anything a new family might need. Then donate the goods to a local social services agency.