Park City Community Foundation’s Early Childhood Alliance educates, and supports members, children, parents, and the community-at-large to prioritize accessible, excellent, and equitable outcomes for children in the Wasatch Back from the prenatal stage through age three. Since 2021, we have provided grants to Utah Diaper Bank and helped deliver diapers across Park City and Summit County to various organizations including Holy Cross Ministries, PC Tots, Park City Library, People’s Health Clinic, Saint Mary’s, Summit County Health Department, Wasatch Pediatrics, Summit County Women, Infant, and Children program, Park City School District, and the Christian Center of Park City.
That program recently grew in our area after various organizations came together to streamline deliveries and collaborate. The result: More families are connected to free diapers—an often-overlooked essential that is expensive and critical to children’s wellbeing.
Understanding the Need for Diapers
According to the National Diaper Bank Network, almost half of all families in the United States reported diaper need in 2023. A quarter of parents and caregivers with diaper need reported having to miss work or school because they don’t have enough diapers to drop their baby off at childcare. Parents with diaper need reported missing, on average, 5.1 workdays in the past 30 days.
An adequate supply of diapers can cost over $100 a month. Despite being a basic necessity for infants and toddlers, diapers are not covered by government assistance programs, such as Women Infant and Children (WIC) and Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP). Babies who stay in their diapers for too long can develop health concerns and diaper need causes families to skip meals, cut back on other essentials, and cause caregivers to feel stress and anxiety.
“And that’s why all these diaper banks exist,” said Vic Velivis, the founder of the Utah Diaper Bank. “Over 250 diaper banks all across the U.S. exist because nobody was supplying diapers to low-income families.”
In 2012, Vic was about to retire from work in the computer industry and was looking for something to do with his free time when he saw a crisis nursery on the local news. They said they offered free childcare services, but didn’t have enough diapers to meet the demand, and neither did the parents who used their services.
Not too long after, he heard an NPR piece about the National Diaper Bank Network, and realized Utah didn’t have a diaper bank. So, he decided he would run a diaper bank in his retirement. He called up a few friends for help, and by March 2013, they were a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
“We started by distributing 11,000 diapers and it’s been able to grow over the last 13 years. Last year we shipped 1.9 million diapers all across the state of Utah,” Vic said, adding that they’re on track to distribute 2.1 million in 2025.
For the first four years, the fully volunteer-run organization ran out of Vic’s garage. He had diapers filling up every room in his home, which was featured in the local news, and led to a warehouse being donated to them. Thanks to the support of the Utah Food Bank, the Utah Diaper Bank is able to deliver diapers to remote locations across the state once a quarter. Local organizations host diaper drives. Billboard companies donate billboard space. “I’m always amazed by how we’ve grown, and it’s because of the donations of the community,” Vic said.
Their local partners have grown to around 80 organizations. Instead of giving diapers out directly, Vic said they can reach more people by having partnered organizations pick up pallets of diapers monthly or quarterly to distribute within their own community. “We know that it changes lives and impacts people tremendously,” Vic said.
Expanding Reach Through Partnership
While Early Childhood Alliance has been providing grants and helping to deliver diapers locally since 2021, it was the collaboration with Christian Center of Park City (CCPC) that allowed us to streamline deliveries and increase the number of diapers being distributed to families in need locally.
CCPC runs food pantries in Park City and Heber, and both locations offer free diapers. Early Childhood Alliance used to pick up diapers at Utah Diaper Bank and deliver them to CCPC, along with various other organizations in Summit County. Then CCPC started sending their own van two years ago. Earlier this year, they went one step further and offered to pick up other organizations’ donations because they had the room in their truck. They are now picking up diapers for the Park City School District and the Summit County Health Department for their WIC (Women Infant Children) and Early Intervention programs.
“With the generosity of Jaime and the team at the Christian Center, we have been able to nearly double the number of diapers distributed in our local community,” said Kristen Schulz, Director of Early Childhood Alliance. With the help of CCPC, nearly 94,000 diapers were distributed locally in 2024 alone.
“We want to be one arm in this big body that’s helping,” said Jaime Mira, Deputy Director of Food and Security at CCPC. And that’s exactly what they are doing.
Park City School District recently opened pantries for students and their families and – with the help of Utah Diaper Bank, CCPC, and Early Childhood Alliance – added diapers to their offerings in September of last year. Ketzel Morales, Community Outreach Coordinator for Jeremy Ranch Elementary, said free diapers have helped the families in the school district with young kids tremendously.
Ketzel also shared a story told to her by her counterpart at Trailside Elementary, Eva Montejano. A student’s mother came into Eva’s office with a toddler and a baby. Eva noticed the toddler had on the baby’s sized diaper, and so she asked her if she needed some diapers that would fit better. The mother started crying because she hadn’t been able to afford diapers for her younger children.
“We’ve definitely been able to see an impact and I know that it definitely relieves some financial burden on a lot of our families because they don’t have to pay for diapers,” Ketzel said. “So, that money can go toward groceries and rent and other basic needs they might have.”
“It’s such a small thing you don’t even think about,” Ketzel said. “We were both [Ketzel and Eva] saying that it’s great we have amazing partnerships with a lot of community organizations and we’re happy the Community Foundation introduced us to the Utah Diaper Bank because we have been able to fill that need for the families we work with.”
If you or someone you know needs free food or diapers, you can visit the CCPC pantry twice a month during their normal hours of 11 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Anyone, no matter how many times they’ve visited that month, can visit between 3:30 p.m.-4 p.m. for perishable foods. If you would like to help local families access diapers, you can donate to the Early Childhood Alliance and specify you want your donations to go toward diapers, or you can visit the Utah Diaper Bank website and donate directly to them.
Update August 13, 2025: Thanks to the help of the Jaime and the Christian Center of Park City, our network has increased diaper availability in Summit County significantly! So far, over the course of the first seven months of 2025, we have distributed more than 75,000 diapers, which is 80% of the 2024 total distribution for the whole calendar year.