Photo by Anna Deardorff
United Way of the Brazos Valley celebrates their Worldwide Day of Action on June 21 by assembling 1,500 Baby Bundles with 80 community volunteers. The event took place in the Save our Streets Ministries gymnasium from 9:45-11:45 a.m., and each bundle includes a baby book, reading tips for parents, a coupon for the library and a tactical toy, according to United Way.
After assembly, the bundles will be put in United Way’s storage unit, then distributed once a month to hospitals in the Brazos Valley, President and CEO of United Way of the Brazos Valley, Peggi Goss says. Volunteers have assembled over 15,000 bundles to date, according to United Way.
“Baby bundles was created to make sure parents had as many tips as possible to help set their children up for success from the very beginning,” Peggi says. “They get … some developmental information, the type of thing they could use for tips for reading for babies, and then also milestones that they can expect that are generalized just to kind of get them [to understand] what to expect when having a new baby.”
Baby Bundles is part of United Way’s Early Literacy Program, aiming to improve youth literacy and ensure that all children have access to books. June 21 is also the longest day of the calendar year, and United Way encourages people to come spend the few extra minutes supporting their local community.
“The main goal is for us to make sure that parents read to their babies early and often, and that’s important because that’s how children develop language,” Peggi says. “Reading, rhyming, all of those things, parents talking to their children. I don’t think new parents always know that they need to engage their children verbally right from the start, so this is our attempt to do that.”
This is the first time the Baby Bundle event has been a single day group event since 2019. Since then, Peggi says the program did assemblies one day at a time over the summer.
“It feels great to have everybody back together again,” Peggi says. “It’s so much more fun for the volunteers to work in a larger group for some reason, they just get a lot more out of it, they kind of feel the need to do it, and then they have a good time doing it.”
One organization volunteering with similar interests in particular was PNC Bank, whose Grow Up Great initiative program perfectly aligns with the Baby Bundle program, according to PNC’s Houston Regional President Bank Julie Young Sudduth.
“Last year, the PNC Foundation supported the United Way of the Brazos Valley Early Literacy Program with a grant that included the Baby Bundle program and other events focused on encouraging parents to foster a love of reading in their children,” Julie says. “…We look forward to continuing to support early education in the Brazos Valley.”
Other organizations there to help include the City of College Station, ABC and the county’s emergency management team, according to Vice President Community Impact at United Way of the Brazos Valley Kat Gammon.
“What I enjoy most about it and why it’s great being back is being able to bring all of these people together for one cause, all at the same time,” Kat says. “During COVID[-19], we were doing many baby bundles with many different groups, and this is the first time we’ve been able to bring the community all together at once. And that’s what United Way is really about, is making those connections, making those networks, bringing everyone together in one purpose. And so today is really special because we’re able to do that again.”
