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Waymo Delivers Baby Care Donations to San Francisco Family Resource Centers

May 12, 2022

SF Charitable Deliveries Logo Lockup

School supplies and pandemic PPE, meals for seniors, Girl Scout cookies… the list of items safely and efficiently  delivered in collaboration with and to nonprofit community partners with fully autonomous driving technology is long, stretching across cities and states. And that’s all in addition to passengers themselves

And the list just got a little longer. Baby supplies for expecting and new San Francisco moms are now among the successful deliveries.   

Waymo, a fully autonomous driving technology company, partnered with First 5 San Francisco, a San Francisco county department dedicated to early childhood development, to deliver urgently needed baby care items to local nonprofits helping area families. In a carefully coordinated effort, Waymo and First 5 San Francisco delivered 271 baby wipe warmer dispensers, 99 booster seats, and 90 nursery organizer sets donated by the online retailer Hiccapop

“We are so grateful to Hiccapop and Waymo for putting these special baby care items into the hands of San Francisco families, and some extra joy in all our hearts!” said Theresa Zighera, Interim Executive Director of First 5 San Francisco, adding that Waymo ensured the deliveries arrived safely and smoothly to the centers’ doorsteps. “It was a fantastic partnership from beginning to end.”

Waymo and its autonomous specialists made delivery stops at two locations of Mission Neighborhood Centers (MNC), the Evans Family Resource Center and Centro de Alegria Family Resource Center. MNC is a community-based organization focused on empowering children, youth, and families respectively by providing community programs ranging from pregnancy and postpartum support to young adult internship opportunities.

Waymo also delivered items to be organized into future distributions for: Jelani House, which provides prenatal support to pregnant women experiencing homelessness; Collective Impact a collaborative of organizations who convene to address issues facing children, youth, and their families; and the Bayview Pregnancy Pop-up Village, that provides a "one-stop-shop" for pregnancy/family-related services and offerings.

“Distributions to new and expecting mothers is now underway,” Zighera said. “Thanks to this generosity, and the ‘all hands on deck effort’, the parenting journey was just made a little easier for hundreds of our families.”

First 5 San Francisco is committed to creating a system that ensures every child can thrive and learn, providing public investment, expertise, and leadership to put resources in the hands of those who care for the city’s children. The organization puts an emphasis on the first five years of a child's life as the greatest opportunity to inspire, nurture, and prepare them to reach their potential.

To date, Waymo has autonomously driven tens of millions of miles on public roads and tens of billions of miles in simulation, across 13+ U.S. states - including over 500k miles without any autonomous specialist in the car.  Waymo is currently operating its ride-hailing service in San Francisco  as part of the Trusted Tester program and counts nonprofits including Support for Families of Children with Disabilities and LightHouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired among its local community partners. 

Fully autonomous driving technology like Waymo’s has the potential to improve road safety while efficiently delivering people and things to their destinations. It holds the promise to improve road safety because it can be designed to carry out all the tasks of a human driver while never driving impaired or distracted and being constantly vigilant of everything around the vehicle.

Waymo’s partnership with First 5 San Francisco to deliver Hiccapop’s donations demonstrates how the promise of the technology – to safely and efficiently get people and things from place to place – can be harnessed to deliver much-needed supplies, complement the missions of local nonprofits, and support community members.