While all of the students in the CAPS program complete a project to help educate the community, one in particular made sure to get the school involved with their endeavor. Dima Majood (12) ran a diaper drive to help prevent diaper rash in newborns.

“You pick an organization or something that matters to you and then you advocate for them,” Dima Majood (12) said. “You teach, you do a drive and you do different things to really provide for the organization that you believe in.”

When it came to which topic she would support, Majood found her choice to be exceedingly simple.

“It was really a no-brainer when it came to what I wanted to do because I wanted to address something with babies,” Majood said. “I’m a big fan of healthy babies.”

Majood’s love for babies is not just a basic interest, but a future career.

“I want to be a neonatologist when I’m older, which is working with newborn babies, so when it came to picking an organization and topic to address it had to be baby related for me because that’s what I love,” Majood said.

In order to promote her project, she went to three different classes to lecture about it.

“I taught in a couple of classrooms…we talked about the causes of it, the signs of it, how to address it, contacting your pediatrician if it gets bad and we also talked about how they could make an impact,” Majood said.

When it came to the importance of her project, Majood felt deeply about the cause she chose.

“Babies need help too, especially when it’s something preventable,” Majood said. “That’s something that gets to my heart. These babies don’t have to be sick if you just take the right precautions and change them the right amount of times.”

In regards to the results, Majood thought that the school did a great job at donating in order to prevent the infection.

“Oh my gosh it went so good,” Majood said. “I actually dropped off all the diapers to the diaper bank and they were so excited. I had 5,537 diapers and 48 dollars and 25 cents donated to them… It’s 50 diapers per family a month so that helps 110 families for one month.”

With all of the families helped there isn’t much about the drive that Majood would change.

“I don’t know that I would have done anything different,” Majood said. “Honestly I don’t think I would have changed it because I love what I did.”

While Majood worked hard to make her drive successful, she wasn’t without help.

“I worked with a couple of great people with the diaper drive,” Majood said. “The Saint Louis area diaper bank gets diapers but then they distribute them to other places that need the diapers which can be other organizations. I volunteered at Oasis international which is an organization that receives diapers from the diaper bank and Celia and Nancy are the main people who coordinate that within Oasis international. They are so kind and so helpful and they were really good about me coming and doing all my hours that I needed to get done.”

With all of the help she received, it was good for Majood to remember the purpose for her project.

“Celia has a newborn baby…so I just had a little baby on my side while I was organizing diapers, it was so fun,” Majood said. “But it also made it so much more sentimental for me because these are the babies that are getting the diapers. You’re looking at it, a little five month old. You want to help those babies.”

With all of the work put in by so many parties, the gratitude surrounding the drive was plenty.

“Thank you to everyone that donated,” Majood said. “Honestly thank you to everyone that donated, supported and read my signs. I appreciate it and the babies and families appreciate it even more.”