Women United is making period kits on Wednesday to distribute to local schools. (Courtesy/Stephanie Bob)
When members of Women United, a fundraising arm of United Way, found out local girls had a lack of access to menstrual products during their periods, they sprang into action.
They asked the community for help and collected tampons and pads to give out to schools around the region.
The group is hosting an event at Barrel and Keg on Wednesday to assemble feminine hygiene kits from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Tickets cost $25 in advance or $30 at the door and cover the cost of supplemental supplies and get attendees a beverage and snacks.
[ Help build Salem Reporter and local news – SUBSCRIBE ]
Elizabeth Schrader, a resource development director at United Way of the Mid-Willamette Valley, said students in Marion, Polk and Yamhill have a lack of access to feminine hygiene products.
“They would either create their own, or they just wouldn’t come to school,” she said.
Schrader said students in the surrounding areas suffer greatly from poverty – in Marion County, 66% of students are living at or below poverty level. In Polk County that number is around 50% and jumps to 70% in Yamhill County.
Schrader said Women’s United is working with period.org, a nonprofit that aims to end period poverty, or a lack of access to menstrual products in schools.
“There is a disparity between the overall health of talking openly and allowing access to those products,” she said.
Schrader said Women’s United reached out to area school districts to find out what they currently offered students.
In the Salem-Keizer School District, students can go to the front desk to get feminine hygiene products, Salem-Keizer Public School spokesman Aaron Harada said.
“Councelors are very vigilant and aware of the needs of students,” Harada said. “It’s very common for them to help students to get sanitary products.”
He said that could range from deodorant to shampoo or toothpaste.
Harada said the school district can’t cull the specific reasons for absences to determine if girls are missing school because of their periods.
Schrader said having to go to the office to ask for a tampon or pad can be a barrier itself.
“When I was a young woman, to me that would’ve been embarrassing to go to the front office,” Schrader said.
In a letter to Secretary Betsy DeVos, the organizers behind period.org asked that the Department of Education perform a study on how “a lack of access to menstrual products in schools creates a discriminatory barrier to education, and how providing those products in school restrooms could eliminate that barrier.”
Have a tip? Contact reporter Saphara Harrell at 503-549-6250, [email protected] or @daisysaphara.
