Desperate Ballarat mothers are "rationing" nappies for their children as cost of living pressures push some essentials out of reach.
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Instead of changing nappies when they are wet or soiled, some struggling mums are forced to only change their baby's nappy once or twice a day.
"They are so expensive that nappies become a luxury," said DV Collective founder Kylie Johanson.
The collective's Empower Our Community Ballarat program, launched in March, has teamed with The Nappy Collective and Rotary Community Hub to create a regional nappy hub in Ballarat to support local families doing it tough.
"We want to do something within Ballarat so the nappies we collect in Ballarat will stay in Ballarat and go directly to support services and shelters," Ms Johanson said.
The nappy drive is the first initiative under the Empower Our Community Ballarat banner, which was created to engage the community to raise funds and do product drives to support local domestic violence services such as Cafs, WRISC, women's shelters and other organisations.
Since the nappy drive was launched last week, more than 10 Ballarat businesses have put forward $100 to sponsor a Nappy Collection Box and become a collection point for donated packs of disposable nappies or individual nappies left over from packs that have already been opened.
Sixty dollars of the purchase price goes toward the Nappy Collective and $40 goes to the distribution and co-ordination of the new Nappy Regional Hub in Ballarat.
Several other locations also accept donations year round.
"We have had a really good uptake with businesses getting involved and we just now need to get the community behind it to donate," Ms Johanson said.
Last year The Nappy Collective collected and distributed around a million nappies across Australia.
"There's always obviously high demand for nappies. That million nappies last year didn't even touch on the demand - they are so expensive," Ms Johanson said.
"But all the nappies we collect in Ballarat will be counted and distributed back out to the community in Ballarat."
Businesses who have purchased a nappy collection box as part of the current campaign include Genesis Gym, Astec Equipment, BJT Legal, CountPro, Jenny's ELC, Hip Pocket Workwear, RSM, John Holland, a number of Woolworths stores and UFS stores.
Drop off points can be found here.
