Paula Foust: Baby Bundles

Difference Makers

Paula Foust: Baby Bundles

October 09, 2021

In this episode, Paula Foust, Executive Director of Baby Bundles, talks about their inspiring work providing clothing and other baby essentials to families in financial need to help give newborns a positive start to life.

Paula Foust joined Baby Bundles in the spring of 2019 as the first full-time Executive Director of the organization. Under her leadership Baby Bundles has experienced steady growth and development in the funds raised and the number of people served by 50%.

She has held numerous leadership positions in multiple states over her 30-year career in the non-profit sector. Her non-profit career started in elder care services where she served as a Long-term care Ombudsman for a ten-county area in Southeast Tennessee. She went on to work for several years for the Alzheimer’s Association in Development and Community Education. Her career then moved into long-term care, working with families and patients with Alzheimer’s Disease. Paula welcomed the opportunity to move into a new area of working with mothers and babies.

Paula is a graduate of the University of Tennessee with a Bachelor of Science from the school of Social and Community Services. She graduated Magna Cum Laude and is a member of Mortar Board.

Paula loves to travel, garden, and spend time with her family. She is married and has three adult children and three grandchildren.

Paula is grateful to be able to serve and give back to the wonderful community of Charlotte, North Carolina where she now calls home.

Baby Bundles was born from heartbreak, started by Emily Harry, Heather Leavitt and Cat Long to help other mothers while honoring the children the three of them never got to love and raise.

Emily and Cat each delivered a child who was stillborn. Heather delivered two who were stillborn, and a third who died an hour after she was born. The world never had the honor of getting to know Low, Catherine, Joseph, Sarah and Mary. Baby Bundles has become their tender legacy – “A gift from our little angels,” Heather says.

Baby Bundles provides a bag full of necessities – baby outfits, blankets and the like – to mothers in need as they leave the hospital with their newborn. The contents of each bag are worth about $305, helping families begin parenthood on the right foot. Since starting in 2010, Baby Bundles has delivered bags to families in and around Charlotte through our community partners.

OUR MISSION: To provide baby essentials to families in financial need in the Charlotte area, helping them get a positive start with their baby.

OUR OBJECTIVE: To present clothing and other baby essentials to underprivileged families in the Charlotte area. Baby Bundles partners with community agencies and local hospitals to identify families in financial need who will receive a bundle of clothing, blankets, children’s books and developmental toys.

Our bundle meets both an emergent need but will last well over the first year of life, supporting basic clothing needs, promoting an infant’s brain growth and development, and fostering caregiver and infant bonding, all of which helps give the newborn a positive start to life.

To learn more, visit www.babybundlesnc.org

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