Through Rain, Sleet and Driving Snow - Our Army of BABY THINK IT OVER Volunteers Came Through!
The Baby Think It Over (BTIO) program had a very successful school year. The infant simulators were in ten schools and 789 students had the RealCare Baby experience. The majority of time, fifty to sixty babies were distributed weekly to schools across Saginaw County. Our volunteers played a vital role in the success of this program.
On Fridays the infant simulators were delivered to the classroom. Getting sixty plus babies assigned to sixty plus students before the bell rang was a hair-raising process. Andra Stackhouse came in every Friday at different times depending on the school scheduled and helped load the babies into the van. Andra learned the distribution process quickly. This made the process less time consuming and hectic for the teachers, students and Vera.
First thing every Monday morning at or before seven A.M. the babies must be picked up. No matter how early we had to leave the CAN Council Michelle Wright would come along to assist. Michelle was a great asset to the BTIO team. She even suggested and helped implement a new process to make pick up day a lot easier.
Once the infants are returned they have to be undressed, washed, all the clothes must be laundered and then re-dressed before Friday’s drop off. In addition, EVERY baby must go through a detailed diagnostic test to ensure that it is working properly for the next class. Preparing the sixty three infant simulators for a new class every week is very labor intensive and time consuming. There were two teams of ladies that became pros at the procedure.
Monday’s team, Kim Sujkowski and Wendy Rhodes conducted the tedious diagnostic testing and washed every baby that went out the previous weekend. On Tuesday’s CAN Board member Gail Schnarstein and active volunteer Jan Dise would dress the babies and make sure all the proper materials were in the box and ready to go before Friday.
Another amazing improvement that was made to the program was a custom shelving system for the infant simulators designed and built by Vic Davila. The simulators have to be plugged into outlets to be recharged for several days. Vic designed custom storing and charging system for the sixty-three infant simulators. This shelving system allowed the babies charging cords to be positioned directly in front of the babies. This eliminated the nightmare of untangling numerous cords for more than sixty simulators every week.
With their generous gift of time and talent, the BTIO volunteers improved the Baby Think It Over program and made it more successful and allowed us to reach even more students in Saginaw County. If you would like more information about this program please contact Vera Harrison at 989.752.7226.