It’s an idea so simple, obvious, and brilliant that you can’t help but agree when you hear someone observe, “Why haven’t we had this for the past 50 years?!”
They are referring to the new Community Baby Closet, located just off the lobby of the Staenberg-Loup Jewish Community Center (JCC Denver). On a sunny August Sunday, dozens of families and countless babies and toddlers gathered to enjoy bagels and celebrate the official opening of the Baby Closet, aptly named because it is the size of a very generous walk-in closet.
Directing traffic around the cribs in the Baby Closet—including families who were donating items and a family shopping for two children—was Daniel Siegel, Director of Engagement and Jewish Learning. Ask him what the Baby Closet needs most and he laughs: “We always need diapers!”
Among those celebrating the day was Alyse Connaway, her husband Liam, and five-month-old son Noah. The Connaways were shocked to discover that Alyse was pregnant while still recovering after a miscarriage. The shocks just kept coming when she lost her job as a social worker during her pregnancy. When Noah was born, the family found themselves with the affordability challenges presented by the needs of a new baby. Alyse found the Baby Closet on Facebook and, when she called the JCC Denver, she connected with Keri Graves, Engagement Program Manager.
“I said to her, ‘I have to tell you I am not Jewish, and so I don’t want to take advantage of the JCC,’” Alyse recalls. “Keri said, ‘It’s not about your faith, it’s about your baby.’”
Thanks to the Baby Closet, the Connaways found a stroller, car seat, playpen, formula, diapers, clothes, shoes, and countless other gently used or new items. What they no longer need now that Noah has grown bigger, they have donated back to the Baby Closet, fulfilling its mission as a sustainable resource for families to access, donate, and exchange baby items.
“When I first came to the JCC, I didn’t feel judged,” says Alyce. “And now, I feel like I am part of a healthy cycle of giving back to the community.”
‘I could really use that’
The idea for the Baby Closet grew organically at the JCC Denver, a natural initiative from participants meeting in the pre-natal group Jewish Baby University and building relationships in the post-partum group Baby Café.
“People were bringing items they couldn’t use to Baby Café, and other families were saying, ‘Oh, I could really use that!’” says Rachel Wool, Senior Director of Development and Marketing. “We realized that we could create an organized space with staffing resources for donated items.”
With support from the community and sponsorship, the JCC Denver transformed a space for the Baby Closet, purchased shelving, assigned a part-time staff member, and built a major volunteer schedule.
“As we created the Baby Closet, we began to recognize how much staff time would be needed to effectively run the space,” says Wool. “We are so grateful for families like the Siegels, the Shulmans, and many others that have donated to help subsidize the cost of running this important free initiative.”
Masha Lior discovered so much value in the Baby Closet that she now volunteers her time to run it.
“My son grows out of clothes and sleep sacks so quickly that it’s really nice to know I can bring it back for someone else to use and find what I need,” she says. “This makes it much easier to be sustainable and environmentally conscious with a newborn.”
The Baby Closet has been particularly helpful to Lior now that she has gone back to work. She found that it was difficult to carry a breast pump back and forth to work. After a visit to the Baby Closet, she now has one pump at home and one at work.
‘Served by the Jewish values of the JCC’
Thanks to a months-long gradual launch, the Baby Closet has already gained a reputation as an invaluable resource for both the Jewish community and the community-at-large.
Sue Parker Gerson likens the Baby Closet to a gemach—the traditional free loan of all kinds of household, holiday, or special occasion items. She heard about the Baby Closet when her daughter’s best friend went into labor early and needed to find supplies for her premature baby. Parker Gerson reached out to the Baby Closet and says it was like having a “personal baby concierge.”
“I came to the JCC, and they handed me an IKEA-sized bag of supplies—clothes, breast milk bags, changing pads, preemie diapers, all in this massive bag,” says Parker Gerson. “My daughter’s friend asked if she could pay, and I said, ‘No, it’s like a lending library. Whatever you don’t need, you just bring back.’”
By the official opening day, the staff could already tell many stories of meaningful moments at the Baby Closet. Keri Graves recalls the young mother who had to leave an unsafe environment quickly with no supplies for her baby. After a visit to the Baby Closet, she drove away with a car seat, a crib, a stroller, and multiple bags of clothing and diapers. It felt, Graves says, like “a beshert moment.”
One day, Rachel Wool was helping a Spanish-speaking woman in the Baby Closet, and that woman turned to her and said, “You are my first Jewish friend.”
“That was her take-away from her experience,” Wool says. “She may have heard something negative about the Jewish community, but she was telling me that I had dispelled that misconception.”
That is a reminder of the many ways that the Community Baby Closet supports both families and the JCC Denver’s mission—to serve, strengthen, and inspire community guided by timeless Jewish values.