When Giovanna Andrews sees a new or expectant mother walk into her new diaper bank in search of free baby supplies, she sparks a connection with them.
Armed with a sweet and gentle disposition, Andrews was in the same position they are only a few years back when she became pregnant in her senior year of college, becoming a single mother to daughter Isabella Harper Andrews.
Even though she was in the midst of her own life-altering struggle, the Wilmington woman founded a small nonprofit called Harper’s Heart to help other mothers in need. She runs it with help from her mother, Chauntee, and a few other volunteers.
“I was giving out diapers back then, but I didn’t know where my mine would be coming from,” she says now, reflecting on the 5½ years since she founded the organization. “I was pulling $20 out of the bottom of my change purse to figure out how I was going to get my next pack.”
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She remembers reaching out for help through social services while pregnant and having people “look at me like I’m the dirt on the bottom of their shoe,” as she put it in a 2019 Delaware Online/The News Journal interview.