- A Passion For Periods, What Activism Looks Like For Aydan Garland-Miner, president and founder of PERIOD at Washington State University.
Ever since I was in fourth grade, I’ve watched copious amounts of YouTube videos. At the beginning, they were all about makeup tutorials, and self primping, but over time, evolved into cinematic shorts, and videos about political movements. In 2015, I watched an interview of a young woman named Nadya Okamoto. She had founded a non-profit, called PERIOD, in 2014, which aims to celebrate menstruation, and provide menstrual products to those in need. She was interviewed by one of my favorite YouTubers at the time, Katy Belotte about the work she was doing. I proceeded to follow Nadya on Instagram and keep up with her for several years following. When she announced the pre-order of her book, I started counting down the days until its release. The day it arrived at my house, I started reading it with urgency, and had finished within a few days. After reading “Period Power: A Manifesto For the Menstrual Movement,” I went on the period website and looked for a way to get involved. At the time, there were a few hundred chapters across the United States at various high schools and universities,(now we have 600 across all 50 states in the United States, and in 30 countries outside of the U.S.) including the University of Washington and Central Washington University, but not at Washington State University. I started filling out the application to start a PERIOD chapter, but I didn’t know all the answers to the questions, so I procrastinated it for about a week before sending it in. When I did, I had no idea what to expect, or what the implications were, but I knew that I had been looking for a way to help people since I was little, and there was a chance that this could be the way. Within a few weeks, PERIOD at WSU was an established chapter, and a registered student organization at WSU with weekly meetings, and bi-monthly events. I distinctly remember laying in my loft, when I was in high school, trying to go to sleep and thinking about helping others, and how to do so. I had spent hours researching service trips in other countries, even asking my mom to help me look too, but they were always very expensive. At the time, I thought serving others meant going to third world countries, and building schools, which it could be, but was not realistic for me. I felt called to PERIOD, in part due to my passion for gender equality, human rights, and justice. Now that I’ve built up the chapter at WSU, was the lead organizer of the Washington State National Period Day Rally, and have been working as the lead policy coordinator in Washington State, I feel very connected to the work we are doing, and doubt it will ever cease. I’ve managed to find a purpose, and a path, activism, something I plan to dedicate the rest of my life to.
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Hello everyone! My name is Alexa Branch and I’m a junior here studying evolutionary biology and ecology at WSU. Last year, I heard about a new chapter of a nonprofit that was starting here at Washington State University, and I decided to join the menstrual movement! PERIOD is a global, youth-powered nonprofit organization striving to de-stigmatize menstruation, to fight anti-period legislation, and to provide sanitary products to those in need. Initially, I was our event planning director, so I planned events such as our “packing parties”, where we take donated menstrual products and assemble them into period packs that contain enough products for one cycle. We later distribute these directly to homeless menstruators both on the street and in shelters. Now, I’m the vice president, so I do some similar tasks as before, but my duties are broader.
One of the reasons I decided to get involved is because I learned a lack of access to sanitary products is actually one of the most important reasons that girls won’t complete secondary education in other countries. When menstruation begins, if a woman experiences a lack of access to proper sanitation methods, she will stay home from school. By the time secondary education is reached, girls can fall more than a quarter of way behind their male peers academically and drop out because of it. Additionally, schools can also lack proper facilities for girls to change and clean menstrual products, preventing them from going. When a girl completes secondary education, she is more likely to marry later, have less children (and healthier children), and is less likely to experience sexual violence. I’ve always felt strongly about gendered education inequality; I am beyond grateful to be able to attend college, knowing that I just as easily couldn’t have been so lucky. I love learning, and for many, a formal education is the gateway to a better life. Being so passionate about equal access to education, it broke my heart to learn that something so simple as not having pads could have such a huge impact on a woman’s life. Period poverty (being unable to afford menstrual products) can affect up to one in four menstruators; I’ve never personally been affected by it, so it wasn’t something I had given any thought to before I became involved. But I knew I had to do something further. At the beginning of the semester, I started working with Dr. Beerman in the School of Biological Sciences here on her research. The work that she does concerns iron-deficiency anemia and diabetes in other countries, primarily in economically developing regions. Her lab gathers this data through a medical program called Hearts in Motion that takes place in Guatemala every year. I work with the information they gather there concerning the health of the patients they see. Dr. Beerman encouraged me to apply to the Hearts in Motion program, and I happily did, beginning to form the idea that if I was accepted, I could bring menstrual products with me for the girls in the villages there. When I found out I was accepted, I immediately started trying to figure out how to make this happen. I had figured that reusable menstrual products would be ideal, so I’ll be reaching out to companies that make reusable menstrual products asking for donations, and also crowdfunding to try and make this dream a reality. Additionally, I’m conducting a research project while I’m there! I will be adding on a separate questionnaire to the one Hearts in Motion already gives, with the help of a team of three wonderful women helping me ask and translate the questions. I want to understand how a lack of access to menstrual products negatively affects girl’s education there, as well as how menstruation is viewed there and how they came to learn about menstruation. I am beyond excited to not only personally see the impact of what Hearts in Motion does, but to know that this project could allow even just one girl to go to school when she otherwise would not be able to. As Nelson Mandela once said, education is the most powerful weapon which we can use to change the world; and the first step is making sure everyone has access to it. |
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