Photo credit Novia Gavins, 2009
Last week, we held a webinar to update our volunteers about the work we’ve conducted over the summer at the Real Diaper Association (in between beach outings, of course). These volunteers bring the information back to their communities to help more families find and use reusable cloth diapers. Since some of our readers may also find this information useful, I will recap our work here.
Cloth Diapers in Municipal Zero Waste Planning
As I’ve written about here in the past, local volunteers successfully advocated that the City of Oceanside adopt a zero waste plan that included recommendations for increasing cloth diaper use.
Real Diaper Circle Leader Accreditations
We accredited several new Real Diaper Circle Leaders to educate and support families in their communities about using cloth diapers:
Kansas City Real Diaper Circle – Aaron Dutton of Independence, MO
Greater Lansing Real Diaper Circle – Lynn Ross of Lansing, MI
Northern New Jersey Real Diaper Circle – Alexis Weinstein of Hillsdale, NJ
Honolulu Real Diaper Circle – Jennifer Nguyen of Honolulu, HI
We are also better supporting our accredited Circle Leaders with an updated handbook and supporting digital resources, and are in the process of creating a fabric binder that will explain the fibers and fabrics used in cloth diapering, including information about caring for them.
RDA on Pinterest
In case you missed it, we launched our Pinterest account this summer! Boards include Handouts for Cloth Diaper Workshops, Circle Leader Videos, Cloth Diaper Info, How Others Do It, and many more. Please follow us and alert us to other good content to include!
Cloth Diapers in Hospitals
We’ve long wanted to follow up on the work started a couple years back by volunteers related to getting cloth diapers back into the maternity wards at hospitals and therefore introduced earlier to all parents. Starting with a collaboration with High Tech High Chula Vista, where teachers researched and planned a project to implement with their students in the spring of 2013 to assist the Real Diaper Association, we developed a larger project plan for which we’ve applied for grant funding to conduct next year. As with most of our projects, this one begins with a research phase and ends with a direct action component that would allow any parents to advocate with their local hospital to bring in cloth diapers to their maternity wards and/or their prenatal / baby care classes.
Parent Savers podcast
I was the guest expert on the diapering episode for the ParentSavers radio show. It turned out to be a great resource for new parents expecting their first baby, so please feel free to pass it on!
WholePregnancy.org
We’re working with Ventura County Real Diaper Circle Leader Janice Roodsari to write a cloth diaper blog series for a new website for natural-minded parents to focus on attracting new parents to cloth diapering. The first post is titled What is a Diaper and Why Would You Need One? and is ideally suited for new parents just approaching the idea of diapers for the first time, so is another great resource to pass on.
2013 Great Cloth Diaper Change and Real Diaper Awareness Month
The new organizing committee has begun work and the date has been set for the 2013 Great Cloth Diaper Change! Saturday, April 20, 2013 at 11am LOCAL TIME! Mark your calendars and watch the Great Cloth Diaper Change website for more information. Since conducting Real Diaper Week in conjunction with the Great Cloth Diaper Change this past year led to an overload on many hosts, we decided to move it to the fall, starting with Real Diaper Awareness Month this November. Watch here for more details as they emerge from the joint RDA/Real Diaper Industry Association committee…
The Great Cloth Diaper Survey!
Lastly, we created, with the help of some statisticians, our first comprehensive current cloth diapering practices survey, intended for 10,000+ responses. The results will be used to create new education and support resources based on the needs and practices of the cloth diapering community. We are also offering high quality DIY reusables as prizes for participants and referrers! Here’s the blog post that includes all the details about the survey.
Of course, none of this work could be done without your support. Thanks to all our members, volunteers, and donors for continuing to support the cloth diaper movement!
Heather McNamara
Executive Director, Real Diaper Association
