Periods. Half the world experiences them, and yet they’re still taboo to discuss in many places. Period Club is a national and international organization in 20 different countries and 40 different U.S states. It’s a youth-powered club centered around ending period poverty and stigma through advocacy, education, and service. The global campaign to make menstrual health a human right has expanded significantly since it began in 2014, with hundreds of chapters worldwide. It’s about dignity, equity, and speaking up to demand change; it’s not just about tampons and pads.
Our school is part of that change. Our local Period Club focuses on making a change, not only on campus but also in the community. We are also a big reason as to why our school has pads and tampons in all bathrooms for students, who can take and use them whenever they need for free, which we wish to make sure are stocked regularly. So far this year, we’ve done a few fundraisers to help raise money to purchase bulk items to include in the food pantry. One fundraiser we did was candy grams, buying a small bag of sweet treats, and a small card where you can have us deliver a cute message to a friend, and ghoulie grams during Halloween, where you could buy a bag of candy and some toys. Then we did our upcoming popsicle fundraiser during May.
We don’t just do fundraisers, as I mentioned before, we participate in our local food pantry on Mondays, handing out toilet paper, pads, and tampons. We will be putting up posters with information about the national period movement with QR codes linking to their website so people who are curious can go check it out, and we hope to begin posting facts on our instagram page for anyone to see and learn things they didn’t know before about periods, like how 1 in 4 students experiencing menstrual cycles experiences period poverty. We are hoping for the next year to set up stands at the farmers market to hand out period products, to go to different areas, and work with women’s shelters to also hand out period products. We want to clear up misconceptions, make people more comfortable sharing their experiences, and help those in need who can not help themselves.
Normalizing period discussions and removing the stigma associated with them is one of our main objectives. We discuss periods in an honest, polite, and proud manner. We’re creating a culture of support rather than being reserved by providing a secure environment for these conversations. We want each young person to understand that they are not alone and that bleeding is not a sign of weakness. If you are interested and would like to learn more, here is the period webpage where you can read up about their causes, what they do, how they started, and/or if you wish to donate to also make a difference in the world.
