• 5 meetings per month
• More than 100 carriers in the libraries
• 6 online points of contact
• More than 150 members (and many more meeting attendees!)
• 1 BWI of STL Gateway

Run 100% by volunteers. And we need you.

BWI of STL serves the babywearing community in the greater Saint Louis metro area, and anyone who’s ever driven from the county to the city, or from across the river to the airport, or from just about anywhere to just about anywhere, knows that’s a lot of ground to cover. We are looking for some more help in order to maintain our current schedule of five meetings each month. The meetings were set up in response to the community’s request to have multiple locations available, and we think it is important to offer this, but it’s going to take some extra hands! Are yours available?

Here are the two most common questions we hear from people considering volunteering:

I can only commit to one meeting a month. Is that enough to be useful?
YES! Our goal is to have enough volunteers that each person can pick a “home” meeting location near them and focus on attending that meeting each month (of course you’re welcome at all of them as long as you love it, but we are not obligating anyone to volunteer beyond their desire or capability, or to drive an hour each way for a meeting!). And even if you can’t make it to regular meetings, we have outreach events and lots of behind-the-scenes and online projects!

I’m not really interested or don’t have time to become a VBE (volunteer babywearing educator). Can I still help?
YES! Yes yes yes! I mean, we do need volunteer educators, but there are many other options as well.

• Do you like meeting new people? We need you to greet caregivers who attend the meeting!
• Are you organized and good at relaying specific information? We need you to check library carriers in and out!
• Are you great at entertaining kids? We need you to keep an eye on the kids at the meetings while the educators (aka those kids’ parents) work with caregivers one-on-one.
• Do you have ideas on ways to introduce babywearing to more caregivers in the area? We need you on our Outreach team!
• Are you passionate about keeping our membership fees low and our libraries well stocked? Good at motivating fellow members to rally for a cause? We need you to join our Fundraising team!
• Are you savvy with social media? Good at writing? Love graphic design? We have a spot for you on our Marketing team!

Here’s the point: Whatever your talent, we can find a great use for it if you would like to help. If you’re an experienced babywearer or you are just great at teaching, and you’re interested in learning BWI’s teaching stances, we can help you become a VBE (the process is extremely non-scary and un-intimidating, in case you were wondering). Maybe you’re not interested in becoming an educator or you’re just starting out with babywearing, but you’re a whiz at all things administrative. Great! Maybe your superpower is taking first-time meeting attendees under your wing and introducing them to other amazing caregivers there. Awesome! (And if you don’t think that’s a true superpower, let me just tell it to you straight from the introvert on the other side of that computer screen: it is.) Maybe you can sew up a weighted demo doll, or solicit carrier donations for the library, or carefully wash All. The. Carriers. when the annual library inspection comes around. (Yes, proper carrier washing is also a superpower.)

Again, my point: We need you!

And if you happen to live on the Illinois side of the river or near the IL meeting location, we *especially* need you (notice our current lack of volunteers based in IL on the map above). Some of our educators are driving an hour each way to staff meetings, or attending 4 or 5 meetings a month to make sure we have enough educators on hand, and it’s too much to ask! Due to a recent loss of some of our educators we are currently in a position of having to reevaluate whether or not we, as a chapter, have the resources to meet the needs of some of our meeting locations. Please consider joining us as a volunteer so that we can keep all five of our meeting locations fully staffed and functioning to serve our local caregivers.

You can learn more about becoming a volunteer here. If you have any interest in volunteering, please send us a message or talk to a volunteer at an upcoming meeting. We would love to get to know you better and see how we can all combine our strengths to support our BWI of STL Gateway as the local babywearing community continues to grow!