Nonprofit 'Welcome Baby' Packs Essentials For North Jersey Moms And Newborns

LITTLE FALLS, NJ — Community members gathered at a Little Falls church for a "packing party," working with a national nonprofit to help local families in need as they prepare to welcome a new baby.

Welcome Baby, founded in 2018, partners with hospitals, clinics, and health care providers to provide low-income mothers "one comprehensive package containing everything she and her newborn need in the first four weeks of life."

They partnered with St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church to host a "packing party" on Sept. 30, filling boxes with diapers, clothes, and other baby needs. The organization will distribute the packages to local health care centers and clinics to help families in need.

Each Welcome Baby box contains clothing, 200 diapers, a month’s supply of wipes, a baby carrier, a baby’s first book and other essentials.

Welcome Baby, founded in 2018, says the organization has provided more than 5,000 packages and over 1 million diapers to low-income families and their newborns in 17 states.

2021 American Community Survey (ACS) data from the U.S. Census Bureau showed that 12 percent of Passaic County families had been in poverty in the past 12 months.

Overall, about 37.9 million Americans were living in poverty last year according to the U.S. Census. The child supplemental poverty measure (SPM) more than doubled, from 5.2 percent in 2021 to 12.4 percent in 2022.

The supplemental measure is widely considered a better metric because it compares people’s spending on food, clothing, shelter, utilities, phone and internet with that of a median household.

In New Jersey, 825,000 people live in poverty, based on the supplemental poverty measure.