Our Mother’s Day Project

Our First Mother’s Day

It started with a $100 donation, a word-of-mouth collection drive and a goal to provide personal care and beauty products to low-income women who could otherwise not afford them. And, to do so with dignity and caring.   In our first year, Mother’s Day, 2001, we collected enough products to fill 265 gift baskets for needy women at three day care centers and two women’s shelters. As we soon found out – for many of the moms, this was their only Mother’s Day gift and the toiletry items were unaffordable luxuries. As one mom told us “ I treasured my Bath & Body Works lotion and used just a little bit each day to make it last”.

Our Wonderful Journey

The following year, we reached out to area public and parochial schools for help with donations and collected enough products to assemble and deliver 625 gift baskets to 11 different locations.

And, it grew. The gifts that went to hundreds of women started going to thousands.

By 2009 with 60 public and parochial schools, 44 businesses and organizations and Dollar Tree holding collecting drives, Mothers Matter volunteers assembled and delivered over 2,700 gift bags to 55 different locations in southern New Jersey and Philadelphia. Our amazing volunteers were doing all of this within a six-week period using borrowed space in a community center that had to be totally cleared out the day after Mother’s Day. It was overwhelming and we were faced with the very real possibility of having to end our Mother’s Day project or find a permanent year-round location.

In February 2011, the Lauren Rose Albert Foundation announced the opening of our Mothers Matter headquarters in Sewell, NJ and the kick-off of our long awaited dream – Mothers Matter Year-Round.

Our wonderful Mother’s Day tradition is still the highlight of our year. Area organizations, businesses, and friends such as Haddon Fortnightly END, Trinity Church Women, Kadar Orthodontics, Rowan College at SJ, Women United of Gloucester County, The River Sisters, Kim Konefsky and many others hold collection drives and volunteer at Mothers Matter every year to ensure the success of our Mother’s Day project.

Mother’s Day gift bags are still assembled with the same care and attention to detail that we developed many years ago to ensure that each one is a perfect and beautiful gift. In 2019, Mothers Matter volunteers delivered over 2,000 beautiful Mother’s Day gifts to 35 different locations including numerous day care centers and facilities such as Ronald McDonald House, Memorial Veterans Home, various medical-pediatric day care and rehab facilities, and women’s agencies.

And, as always, delivery days were the best for our volunteers who gave so much of their love, caring and energy to brighten Mother’s Day for so many deserving women.

Mothers Matter Donation “Wish List”