Eugene nonprofit Bags of Love provides custom-made care packages to children and families in crisis, migrant families who might otherwise have few personal belongings, children in the foster care system, or children who may be victims of sex trafficking.
For about four years, Alma Lopez has been a recruiter and family engagement specialist with the Migrant Education Program (MEP) at Lane Education Service District, helping connect migrant families with resources to prosper. Lopez says Bags of Love, located on Green Acres Road, has been instrumental in helping MEP meet that goal.
According to Executive Director Misty Hall, Bags of Love is a “service agency that helps children in crisis,” whether that be due to abuse, neglect, poverty, homelessness, disaster, or living in a migrant family that may simply need a helping hand while getting settled in the area.
Bags of Love provides care packages with clothing, pajamas, new toothbrushes, shampoo, soap, new socks, and underwear to children from birth to 17 years old. The bags also include comfort items like handmade quilts, fleece blankets, stuffed animals, toys, and books — “any and everything that the child might need,” Hall says. “We’re trying to make sure their physical well-being as well as their emotional health is helped in their time of crisis.”
Bags of Love’s care packages are typically ordered as needed by partner agencies and then delivered to children. What’s included varies depending on the recipient’s age. If there are sensory issues surrounding zippers, for example, or any other personal preferences the child or teenager might have, that’s considered. “If it’s a child that likes unicorns and the color blue, we make sure that there’s unicorns and blue in their care package,” Hall says.
Bags of Love’s founders, Hall says, “saw a need.” Children often enter the foster care system with few, if any, belongings, and likely nothing to put them in. Often, children relocate with their personal items in a garbage bag. “They’ve lost personal belongings, or if they come from the sex trade, they have been denied personal belongings,” Hall says. “So that’s what it stemmed from, children who had nothing. The founders thought, ‘We can do better.’”
Bags of Love started in 2008, and the service is unique to Lane County. It is largely funded through grants, and the items in the bags are donated or handcrafted by volunteers. “We don’t get government, state, or county funds in any way,” Hall says.
Bags of Love distributed nearly 5,000 bags in 2023 and will nearly match that this year. “Our doors are always open for agency partners,” Hall says. “We predominantly work in Lane County,” she adds, “but if someone in Oregon, whether it’s rural or urban, reaches out to us and asks to be an agency partner, we don’t deny them.”
Bags of Love works with organizations like St. Vincent de Paul, parenting and caregiver support group WellMama, lactation and baby feeding support group Daisy CHAIN, and many others. Agencies like the FBI and Women, Infants, & Children (WIC) keep Bags of Love packages on hand. When the FBI investigates child trafficking cases, “they don’t know the victims ahead of time,” Hall says, so Bags of Love prepares bags appropriate for different ages and sizes. The organization always needs volunteers, whether they work at home or onsite.
“Bags of Love provides so much value to the families we serve,” MEP’s Lopez says. “Without all of the supplies that Bags of Love donates, these families would need to sacrifice other important living necessities to meet that need. But Bags of Love takes that worry off their shoulders so they can focus on providing for their families in other areas. Families we serve are extremely grateful for all the supplies provided to them.”
Bags of Love, 1052 Green Acres Rd. , 541/357-4957, bagsoflove.org
