Save the Storks aims to ‘create a story of hope’ for women facing an unplanned pregnancy

Spotlight:

Save the Storks is a nonprofit that started in 2012 with one primary goal: to help women who find themselves in unplanned pregnancies.

Chief Executive Diane Ferraro says she joined the organization in 2018 to oversee marketing and stepped into her current role in January 2021.

To learn more, the La Jolla Light posed the following questions to Ferraro:

Q. Who founded your organization? What is its mission?

A. The group that founded the organization had a vision of collaborating with pregnancy centers to put mobile medical units on the road and offer women free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds. Today, our mission is to create a story of hope and empowerment for every woman facing an unplanned pregnancy.

Q. What services do you offer?

A. We are best known for our state-of-the-art mobile medical units, of which we have 90 on the road in 30 states. Eleven of these units are in California, with one in San Marcos and one in Chula Vista.

Save the Storks has 90 mobile medical units in 30 states, including two in San Diego County, to offer free pregnancy tests and ultrasounds.

(Save the Storks)

Licensed medical professionals provide a variety of free services, including pregnancy tests, ultrasounds, STI [sexually transmitted infection] testing, parenting and prenatal education programs, after-abortion support and material resources.

Our nonprofit organization also provides training, grants and support for women’s health clinics and pregnancy centers, curriculum for churches, and support, connections and volunteer training for community members interested in helping pregnant women and single moms.     

Q. What makes you and/or your organization unique compared with similar ones?

A. Our mobile medical clinic program was one of the first of its kind in the United States specifically focused on women’s health. We have inquiries weekly from churches and pregnancy centers to bring more of these to cities around the country.

While there are many wonderful organizations serving moms and families, Save the Storks is unique due to our holistic approach to supporting women, not just during the pregnancy but after they give birth. Many women who are single moms lack the resources and programs necessary to not just survive but thrive. Every woman deserves love and support, and this is especially true when she is a single mom.

We are educating churches on how to better equip single moms in their local communities. We do this with our START course, a video training series that is free to churches.

We also have a national medical director who is an ob/gyn and ER doctor who oversees our women’s health program. Her focus is on training pregnancy centers to become women’s medical health clinics.

Adoption is something close to my heart, being an adopted child and having been a foster and adoptive mother. Many of our social media stories share the power of adoption.

Q. What’s new recently with the organization that you want everyone to know about?

A. We have been working on a new initiative, For Every Woman, that is already connecting with Gen Z and millennial women in San Diego and nationwide. The website, ForEveryWoman.org, is a comprehensive online enterprise and is just a sneak peek at what we hope will inspire and equip future generations.      

Q. What connections do you have to La Jolla specifically or the San Diego area in general?

A. I am an Orange County native but now call San Diego my part-time home. Our national organization’s headquarters are in Colorado, but because the need is so great here in San Diego and Southern California, we have key staff members who live and work here. My birth mother, whom I met when I was 26 years old, also lives in San Diego County, so it is a blessing to be providing services right here to other women who, like her, find themselves in unplanned pregnancies.

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