Long Island mom connecting mothers in need with free baby essentials

When Heather Selvaggi was living with her baby and a toddler in a family-and-child substance abuse rehab center and then at a shelter in Brentwood, getting diapers for the children was a daunting dilemma — until she was connected with Baby Essentials of Long Island.

“It gets really expensive,” she said of trying to meet the children’s needs. Baby Essentials eliminated some of the financial pressure by delivering free diapers and wipes to her at both locations for Christian, 1, and Immanuel, 4, since April 2025.

“It’s really amazing what they’re doing,” said Selvaggi, now living in an apartment in upstate New York. “It really made a good impact on my life.”

Infants need up to 12 diapers per day, at a monthly cost of $80 to $100, according to the nonprofit National Diaper Bank Network.

Baby Essentials of Long Island delivers diapers and wipes directly to families in need who may not have reliable transportation. The program, funded through grants and donations, reaches families in their homes, in shelters and even, at times, in the Suffolk County Jail for inmates whose babies are with them.

“We service hundreds and hundreds of families on Long Island,” said Kerry Gillick-Goldberg, 54, of Bethpage, a public relations and marketing professional who is the founder and president of Baby Essentials, which launched in 2020.

“On some weekends, we can deliver to 30 families . . . it’s pretty substantial.” Gillick-Goldberg estimates Baby Essentials delivers at least 100,000 diapers a year to families who are connected to them through social service agencies, case workers and health care providers.

‘Baby bundles’

And it does more than just diapers and wipes. The nonprofit also helps create “baby bundles” for new mothers-to-be that include a baby bathtub with about $250 worth of items such as onesies, burp cloths, a diaper bag, baby blankets and more. Baby Essentials typically also throws a high-tea themed baby shower around Valentine’s Day, and new mothers leave with a bundle, extra diapers and gifts from sponsors.

To keep growing, Baby Essentials needed an office — and last month it got one, opening at the new 1051 Franklin building in Garden City. The Baby Essentials sign went up on the office door, and the charity will base its back-end operations and host business meetings and volunteer events there while continuing to operate as a delivery service. The office space is being donated by the building owners, Gillick-Goldberg said.

‘What I really needed’

Getting the diapers helps struggling parents answer difficult questions — “Do I pay this bill, or do I buy diapers?” “Do I buy diapers or do I buy milk?” — said Kelly Urena, a Baby Essentials of Long Island board member. “It reminds people that people care; that they’re not alone,” said. “Sometimes it’s difficult to ask for help, but if you muster up the courage to ask, people will help.”

Sarita Silva, 37, of Valley Stream, already had two older children when she gave birth to triplets in 2025. Though she does secretarial work part time and her husband, Oscar, 42, works full time for an air conditioning company, the cost of providing for three babies at once was a financial blow, she said. “What I really needed the most was diapers,” Silva said. Every month she gets about half the diapers she needs from Baby Essentials and buys the rest. “Financially, it’s a big relief,” she said. “I just want to give a big thanks to that organization for helping me with all the baby supplies.”

The group’s funding

Gillick-Goldberg said she funds a chunk of the charity herself, spending $20,000 to $30,000 a year on diapers and wipes with earnings from her boutique public relations business KGG Enterprises and, when she can, adding formula or baby clothing. She also now gets funding from Fidelis Care health insurance and a grant from the Suffolk County Department of Health’s Smart Start Suffolk program for new mothers in need. She works with Harmony Healthcare’s Perinatal and Infant Community Health Collaborative to put together and distribute the aforementioned baby bundles for their clients. Last month, Catholic Health coordinated a collection at three Catholic schools on Long Island to donate baby items to distribute at three Catholic hospitals.

Harmony Healthcare has six locations on Long Island — Elmont, Freeport, Hempstead, Oceanside, Roosevelt and Westbury — and caters to the underserved population in Nassau County, many living under the poverty level, said Amy Fleischer, the organization’s director of development. The organization helps women from pregnancy through the time the child turns 2 years old. 

“Kerry sources all the items in the baby bundles and puts them together so wonderfully and thoughtfully,” Fleischer said. She said it’s an example of one nonprofit organization helping another nonprofit to get the mothers-to-be what they need for their newborns. “It’s what we can do to try to give these moms a little something so their babies can start off in the world not behind the eight-ball,” Fleischer said.

Daisy Mariela Lopez, 33, of Levittown, arrived in the United States from Honduras when she was seven months pregnant with her son, Manuel Armando, now 2 years old. She worked for 14 years as a teacher in Honduras and is currently looking for a job as a nanny, she said in Spanish. Her husband, Manuel Orellana Lopez, 28, is currently not working because he broke his hand recently. They have no other family on Long Island to assist them, she said.

“It’s been very difficult,” Mariela Lopez said. She said she couldn’t believe the help that Gillick-Goldberg’s charity offered her baby, which, in addition to diapers and wipes, included Christmas gifts for the baby and parents. “She became an angel in our lives,” Mariela Lopez said.

‘A big mitzvah project’

Baby Essentials was born during the early days of the pandemic, when parents who were diagnosed with the virus had to quarantine.

“They weren’t allowed to leave their house anymore. So, all the contact tracers had to ask them these questions about what their personal needs were. And it turned out that diapers were paramount,” Gillick-Goldberg said. “If you had Amazon, you could get deliveries. You could order your own diapers. But if you didn’t have money? Or what if you’re one of those people who doesn’t have a credit card? All of a sudden, you’re left with nothing.”

She felt compelled to help because she and her husband, Joe, 57, who works in financial technology, were not affected financially by the pandemic, she said. “How do I accept the fact that Joe and I are fine, and other people can’t put a diaper on their kid?” she said.

She and Joe often challenge each other to “do good,” she said. He is Jewish and she is Catholic; they have one college-aged daughter. “The way I live my life is based on the Corporal Works of Mercy, to feed the hungry, take care of the poor,” Gillick-Goldberg said. And Joe would ask her, “Did you do a mitzvah today?” each day when they got home from work. “If you think about it, Baby Essentials is like a big Mitzvah Project,” Gillick-Goldberg said.

At the beginning, she would mask up and shop herself for the diapers, operating out of her Bethpage home. Donors would drop diapers off in front of her garage. When storing diapers there became untenable, she rented a storage unit at Cube Smart in Bethpage and drivers would meet her there to pick up their deliveries.

“I’ve got pictures of myself with multiple shopping carts with piled high diapers, with receipts like, this long,” she said. She hired people at $20 per hour to drop off diapers. Friends and even some of the contact tracers would donate their time, she said. Sometimes teenagers needing supervised driving hours to work toward earning their driver’s license would volunteer with their parents, simultaneously earning community service credit, she said.

The service “took on a life of its own” over the past six years, Gillick-Goldberg said.

‘A lifeline

Heather Edwards, executive director of the Allied Foundation, the nonprofit arm of Allied Physicians Group, called Gillick-Goldberg’s work a “safety net” for families who can’t get to a local agency because they don’t have transportation or who live in a part of Long Island that doesn’t have any other options. “She does direct delivery; that’s one of the things that makes her agency unique and why we love working together. For a lot of people, that’s a lifeline,” Edwards said.

Gillick-Goldberg estimated she spends about 10 unpaid hours a week on the charity; Baby Essentials is otherwise staffed by paid employees and volunteers. Clients are now referred to the organization through Help Me Grow, a Long Island nonprofit that addresses developmental and basic needs for families with children younger than 5.

Ely Karen Pineda, 22, of West Hempstead, has fraternal twins — Zoey and Matias — aged 1 year, 6 months, and Baby Essentials has been helping her family with diapers because her husband hasn’t had a lot of work recently. “When I run out, I tell them,” she said in Spanish, and Baby Essentials will deliver her two boxes of diapers on a weekend, for instance. Sometimes the delivery will also include skin creams for the baby and mom and other items. “It helps me a lot with my family,” Pineda said.