Buy Diapers or Food? This Mom Is Keeping Families From Having to Make Such `Heartbreaking Decisions’
Meet Daily Point of Light Award honoree Corinne Cannon. Read her story and nominate someone you know as a Point of Light.
When Corinne Cannon had her first child, Jack, in 2009, she felt the way many first-time parents do as they try to make sense of parenthood: beleaguered by late nights when the baby won’t sleep, anxious about the expense of childrearing, inexperienced.
But she realized those feelings were magnified exponentially among families in the Washington, D.C., area who had far less than her family.
She thought of the “heartbreaking decisions” those families faced: “Do you keep that child in a diaper – when you know it should be changed – so that your other children can have dinner?”
Cannon began to reach out to nonprofits in her community asking how she could help, and they all voiced a similar need for one item in particular: diapers.
Diapers cannot be purchased with food stamps or through WIC, the federally funded health and nutrition program for women, infants and children. There were no diaper banks in the area. So Cannon stepped in to fill the void for struggling families, starting DC Diaper Bank on her son’s first birthday.
