Newsletter: 2014 in review, and Happy New Year!
By Holly McCroskey Lewis, BWI-BA Secretary-Treasurer
As we all return from our winter holiday break, Babywearing International of the Bay Area is finally sending out its 2014 year-end “holiday letter”. We want to report to you all on the amazing year we’ve had! Forgive us if we brag a little. You all get some of the credit, after all, especially if you’re a dues-paying member, or have volunteered your time to help run meetings and events, or have donated a baby carrier or two to us!
Using membership dues and fundraising proceeds, during 2014 BWI-BA purchased 80 carriers for our libraries: One pouch, 13 mei tais, 17 buckle carriers, 24 ring slings, and 25 wraps! Plus, two suitcases and several demo dolls. And these numbers do not include the carriers that were donated to us, of which there were also a substantial number and great variety. Our combined libraries now contain more than 260 items – every type of carrier, plus accessories like infant inserts and sling rings, and educational materials such as instructional DVDs.
We added two new meeting locations in 2014 (Livermore and Campbell), bringing our number of subchapters to seven – and we have two more launching early in the new year (the long-wanted Marin meeting beginning this month in Mill Valley, and an evening meeting coming soon in East San Jose).
We’ve added nine new Volunteer Babywearing Educators to our chapter this year, for a current total of 16. And two of our VBEs qualified as Advanced Babywearing Educators this year – Congratulations to Jay and Cristina! (We already had one Master Babywearing Educator, Sarah R.) We have great breadth and depth of skills here, and I count myself fortunate to work with such a fantastic leadership group.
On average, we’ve helped 154 people each month – that’s the average total attendance at all of our meetings since Livermore and Campbell launched in early 2014. Individual meetings range from an average of 14 or 15 people, up to nearly 40! And that’s counting only the adults, not the babies.
We’re averaging more than 20 new members every month, and our current membership roster is 259 people (including the 16 VBEs). To give some sense of how crazily fast we’ve grown: In all of 2013, we had 58 new members (not counting VBEs). In 2012, we had 18. That rate of expansion is insane; I have no words for just how astonishing and wonderful – and sometimes overwhelming! – it really is. Not to mention that those who sign up for membership are only a fraction of the number we’ve reached at meetings and through our online presence! Our Facebook page, which we created in April 2014, boasts 779 “likes”, and our Facebook group (in existence since 2009) now has 1,988 members. Our Yahoo Group, still creaking along since its formation way back in August 2005 (under a different name – that was before BWI existed), has 1157 members.
This was a big year for us in other ways too. We launched a website, and vastly increased our outreach efforts, notably by running the “babywearing lounge” at MommyCon SF in April. We also participated in a dozen smaller events, from making a video for a “So You Think You Can Dance” contest, to being counted for the Babywearing World Record, to teaching and promoting babywearing at baby fairs and other events serving parents and caregivers from every walk of life.
We also organized some big fundraisers – another new endeavor for BWI-BA. Many thanks to all who bought t-shirts with our logo (and promote us by wearing them!) and those who booked photo shoots during International Babywearing Week, plus of course a huge thank you to Alli, our photographer who donated her services. Adding the proceeds of those efforts to the Amazon Smile program and some cash donations, we’ve raised a net total of $915 this year. That number is small compared to what we receive from membership dues, but it’s a very satisfying result for the first year we’ve made any real effort to fundraise beyond the membership program.
Looking forward, we have many exciting new things in the works, including new meeting locations, greater efforts to work with underprivileged families and help them benefit from everything babywearing can offer them, a program for recruiting and training new VBEs, a better library lending system and ID tags, new fundraising efforts that we think you’ll like, and yes, of course, we expect to buy a whole lot more library carriers for you, our members and fans, to play with and learn from. Thank you so much for telling your friends about us, for joining our Facebook group, for coming to meetings and listening to us and borrowing carriers and signing up to support us as members. We’re so thrilled to be spreading the babywearing love throughout the Bay Area!
Happy New Year!
