Bester Community of Hope’s Babypalooza draws 600, turns baby shower into family event
Babypalooza drew more than 200 families and 600 community members, turning a free baby shower at Bester Elementary into a full family-support event.
More than 200 families and 600 community members filled Bester Elementary School on April 11 for the 10th annual Babypalooza Community Baby Shower, a turnout that showed how far the event has grown beyond a simple celebration. The free gathering, designed for young families with children ages 0-5 and expectant parents, ran from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. under the theme Sweet as Can Bee: Buzzing with Love for Growing Families. Families entered an Early Learning Carnival, the clearest sign that Babypalooza was built to do more than hand out gifts.
That scale matters because Babypalooza now functions as a high-touch access point for early childhood support in the Bester Elementary School neighborhood in Hagerstown. Bester Community of Hope, the organizer behind the event, is a prevention-focused initiative of San Mar and one of 14 sites nationally supported by Casey Family Programs as part of the Communities of Hope effort. In practice, that means the school-based event can pull together families, service providers, and community partners in one familiar place, with Alicia Taluskie listed as the contact for this year’s shower.
The 2026 crowd also fits a clear growth pattern. The 9th annual Babypalooza in 2025 drew 161 families and 500 people, with five local early intervention agencies inside the Early Learning Carnival, more than 40 resource vendors, a Parental Resiliency Room hosted by the Jack E. Barr Center for Well-Being, and 14 prize bundles raffled off. A year earlier, the 6th annual event drew more than 500 expecting and current parents and brought in over 40 local agencies and businesses. Across those editions, Babypalooza kept the same core formula: one place where families could move from celebration to concrete help without losing the welcoming tone of a community baby shower.
The support around the event has widened as well. In March 2025, Patriot Federal Credit Union donated more than $1,000 in items for Babypalooza, underscoring how local businesses have treated the program as a community investment rather than a one-off giveaway. That kind of backing helps explain how the event has matured into a dependable family-support platform in South End Hagerstown, where the measure of success is no longer just turnout but the number of families who leave with resources, connections, and a clearer path into early-learning support.
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