The lack of access to menstrual products affects many girls and women in developing and developed countries. A lack of access to appropriate hygiene products can compromise a girl’s education and life chances. However, these four organizations fighting to end period poverty provide opportunities and empowerment to girls and women in need.
Top 4 Organizations Fighting Period Poverty
1. Period:
High school students Nadya Okamoto and Vincent Forand founded PERIOD in 2014 to fight period poverty and stigma. Okamoto was inspired to help start the nonprofit after dealing with teen homelessness. Homeless women often don’t have access to menstrual products because they can’t afford them or because shelters don’t have enough products available.
Today, PERIOD has more than 300 chapters that help distribute menstrual products worldwide, and PERIOD’s work has served 510,181 women to date. The nonprofit is also working to eliminate luxury taxes on tampons and pads in the U.S. and abroad.
2. Freedom4Girls:
Tina Leslie founded Freedom4Girls in 2016, inspired by Leslie’s experience working with the charity Maji Safi Projects in Kenya. During this time, Leslie helped Maji Safi Projects’ period poverty campaign, which included sewing workshops for local women, making washable, reusable menstrual pads, and shipping them to schools in semi-rural Mombasa.
The program also provides reproductive and menstrual education for girls and women in the community. Currently, Freedom4Girls provides period supplies to 30 schools in the UK. To improve girls’ ability to have their periods in school and extra-curricular activities. As teachers are often tasked with providing period supplies to students.
Freedom4Girls is also working with community groups and other period poverty organizations fighting menstrual poverty to set up “donation stations” to collect menstrual products for other vulnerable groups, such as refugees.
3. Ppoverty:
Ppoverty is an initiative of a U.S.-based non-profit charity organization – ZamZam Foundation, Inc. Focused on improving awareness and the menstrual health of women worldwide through various projects aimed at fostering women’s education, health, employment, and empowerment.
Jute pad is one amazing project we are currently executing to end period poverty from the Earth by creating organic biodegradable sanitary pads made of jute plant fibres to help women prevent menstrual diseases and as an earth-loving and easily decomposable alternative to traditional sanitary pads. We aim to support three essential verticals of our mission through this project.
4. Dignity Period:
The Dignity Period is a prime example of women’s empowerment and women’s health working together to improve lives. In 2014, Fulbright scholar Dr Lewis Wall spent eight months improving obstetrics. And gynaecology residency education at the Merkel University School of Health Sciences in Ethiopia.
During this time, he and his wife met Freweini Mebrahtu, the owner of the Mariam Seba hygiene factory. Seeing that poverty in that period was an issue that could be addressed through outreach, education, and empowerment, Wall and Mebrahtu partnered to create the Dignity Period.
Today, Dignity Period collaborates with Mekelle University to conduct research and provide education on the socioeconomic and cultural impact of period poverty; meanwhile, the nonprofit provides community members with reusable menstrual pads through Mebrahtu’s factory. Which trains in the region and employs women.
Women and girls worldwide face the impact of a lack of access to menstrual products and reproductive education. Absenteeism, reduced opportunities for socioeconomic mobility and loss of dignity are just a few of the struggles faced by people living in times of poverty. So, organizations fighting to end period poverty are taking a stand to empower these women and improve their futures.
