Meet the Donating Divas, Durham's donation team
DURHAM — What first started as a group of friends, later turned into a group of donators. The Donating Divas are a group of 14 women and two children, ages three to 81, who collect food throughout the year to donate quarterly to local food banks, individuals and families.
Lisa Chaplin, a member of the Donating Divas, says the group of friends met more than 20 years ago when their children were in preschool and have kept in touch over the years.
Individually, they have all volunteered around the community. Julie Madill, the “organizer/researcher” of the group, according to Chaplin, sent the women an email suggesting that they should use their friend group for change and the group later voted to call themselves the Donating Divas.
The group is tasked to each buy one food item per week, plus a bonus item every three months. Each month, they’ll purchase a specific item, like canned vegetables, juice boxes, or cereal. The bonus item will be something like cake mix or hot chocolate, says Chaplin.
Though she says, “It’s always more than 13 items per person.”
Every three months, the group gets together to donate the items. They choose which food bank, charity or family within the Durham Region will receive the donations.
If they choose to donate to a food bank that quarter, they will ask beforehand what items the food bank needs and they will “tailor [their] shopping to that,” says Chaplin.
She says, usually through word of mouth, the Donating Divas will find a family or individual that is in need of help.
She gives an example of a single mother who needed food donations. They found the closet grocery store to her so they could buy her a gift card, they learned the ages of children and whether or not they had any allergies to customize their food choices to the family.
“We just want to find out what they need the most and we do our shopping that way,” she says.
They don’t know the name of the mother and the mother doesn’t know who they are. They want their donations to be anonymous. “Oh, we love it. All of us kind of did that on our own already but I can’t even describe the feeling, especially when you find somebody like a single mom that needs help, that the 14 of us can help somebody.”
During the holidays, Chaplin says, the Donating Divas went to a local charity and picked tags off its Christmas tree that had children’s wishes written on them and bought gifts that quarter instead of food. Chaplin says the group loves helping the community and hopes others will follow suit.
“It’s rather sad that there are so many people that need help, so hopefully other people get the message that we would want to pass on to people, it's that, 'You can do this too'.”
Chaplin’s sister, Lynn Smith, says, “Most of us would agree, we could always be on the other side of the fence one day, so we hope someone would help us out.”
Along the way, the group has expanded to include Ella, 3, and Alex, 6, who are relatives of a group member. Both have helped to shop for the food donations.
“I can see us doing this until we’re in our eighties, honestly. They’re just such wonderful people,” says Chaplin.
Originally published in Durham’s Metroland newspapers/durhamregion.com on May 22, 2018.