Imag­ine be­ing a young teenage girl feel­ing too guilty to ask your par­ents to pur­chase fem­i­nine nap­kins (pads) when you see it is al­ready a strug­gle buy­ing the food that the fam­i­ly needs. Add the fact that men­stru­a­tion is still a taboo sub­ject for many peo­ple around the world, mak­ing it even more dif­fi­cult to ask for help when it is need­ed.

Pe­ri­od pover­ty is not a com­mon term you would hear or even a top­ic which is dis­cussed. It is a term which refers to hav­ing a lack of ac­cess to fe­male san­i­tary prod­ucts due to fi­nan­cial con­straints, some­thing many women and girls are lucky enough to take for grant­ed. Here in T&T, even though it is un­spo­ken of, pe­ri­od pover­ty is hap­pen­ing on our doorsteps and is hav­ing se­ri­ous ef­fects on the ed­u­ca­tion, health, dai­ly rou­tines and gen­er­al qual­i­ty of life for thou­sands of women and es­pe­cial­ly teenage girls.

Based on re­cent stud­ies con­duct­ed in the UK, around one third of women, and girls around the world lack ac­cess to ster­ile san­i­tary prod­ucts. As shock­ing as it may sound, they of­ten have to use strips of cloth­ing, grass or an­i­mal hides to man­age their pe­ri­ods. Take, for in­stance, in African coun­tries, such as Tan­za­nia and Kenya, most fe­males on their pe­ri­od use “kan­ga,” lay­ered pieces of thick, colour­ful fab­ric used for mak­ing tra­di­tion­al east African dress­es. These stiff ma­te­ri­als not on­ly get wet quick­ly as well as of­ten leads to uri­nary tract in­fec­tions, but al­so leave girls and women with the em­bar­rass­ing fear of bleed­ing through their cloth­ing.

It is un­sur­pris­ing that lack of be­ing able to af­ford pe­ri­od prod­ucts can have a far-reach­ing ef­fect on young women’s lives, with those suf­fer­ing from pe­ri­od pover­ty be­ing least like­ly to com­plete their sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to the most re­cent Al­ways Con­fi­dence & Pu­ber­ty Sur­vey, near­ly one in five girls in the Unit­ed States have ei­ther left school ear­ly or missed school en­tire­ly due to lack of ac­cess to pe­ri­od pro­tec­tion.

While re­cent sta­tis­tics on pe­ri­od pover­ty in the UK shows that 15 per cent of girls have strug­gled to af­ford men­stru­al prod­ucts, with 12 per cent ad­mit­ting to im­pro­vis­ing due to af­ford­abil­i­ty is­sues. In African coun­tries, the pe­ri­od pover­ty sit­u­a­tion in some cas­es is so ex­treme that re­search con­duct­ed by non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions found that women even en­gaged in trans­ac­tion­al sex to ob­tain pads.

Bring­ing it clos­er to home, Shelly-Ann Weeks, a Ja­maican sex ed­u­ca­tor and colum­nist, stum­bled up­on the is­sue af­fect­ing many Ja­maican women. She not­ed that in talk­ing about fe­male re­pro­duc­tive health, women would come and tell their sto­ries and one com­mon thread was pe­ri­od pover­ty. “Women would tell me that they would buy a tow­el for Jam$150 ($9) and cut it up to use as pads. One woman who worked as a nan­ny would steal di­a­pers to use be­cause her nan­ny salary can’t pro­vide,” she said.

Weeks, said for many women a choice has to be made be­tween feed­ing their fam­i­lies and buy­ing san­i­tary sup­plies. “If she has five chil­dren and Jam$500 ($26) and she needs to buy din­ner and the cheap­est pad is Jam$120 ($7) to Jam$150 ($9) she is not buy­ing pads, she has to feed her chil­dren. We have women choos­ing be­tween buy­ing food and buy­ing an es­sen­tial item.”

Weeks not­ed that in the Caribbean, there is still a stig­ma around pe­ri­ods. Pads are still wrapped in news­pa­per and bagged in a black bag sep­a­rate­ly and apart from oth­er items that are pur­chased. Girls are taught that pe­ri­ods make you ug­ly and the Bible (Leviti­cus 15:19-33) refers to women as be­ing un­clean. She said in Ja­maica, pop­u­lar curse words are all based on a woman’s pe­ri­od. “These cul­tur­al norms, that is what makes it hard for women to talk about it,” she said.

While in T&T there is no re­al, sta­tis­ti­cal da­ta to show how se­ri­ous the is­sue of pe­ri­od pover­ty is, many per­sons such as so­cial work­ers are ful­ly aware of this wide­spread prob­lem, which women and girls are silent­ly be­ing af­fect­ed by.

On March 26, in­ter­na­tion­al fem­i­nine pro­tec­tion brand, Al­ways—which is lo­cal­ly dis­trib­uted by Al­stons Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd (AM­CO)—launched the End Pe­ri­od Pover­ty (#End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty) Ini­tia­tive. The pro­gramme plans to do­nate over 115,000 san­i­tary nap­kins to young women at tar­get­ed sec­ondary schools across T&T, while aim­ing to in­crease ac­cess to fem­i­nine hy­giene prod­ucts for girls in chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances so they can stay con­fi­dent, and stay in school.

#End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty aims to spark a con­ver­sa­tion about this is­sue in T&T and mo­bilise the pub­lic to join the cause. Lo­cal­ly, Al­ways has part­nered with the NGO Kids in Need of Di­rec­tion (KIND) to dis­trib­ute the prod­ucts dur­ing the sec­ondary school tour.

The pro­gramme will al­so be launched in Ja­maica, where over 170,000 san­i­tary nap­kins will be do­nat­ed by Al­ways.

In both T&T and Ja­maica, the pub­lic has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­volved with the cause and per­son­al­ly make a dif­fer­ence. For every pur­chase of an Al­ways prod­uct, the com­pa­ny will in turn di­rect­ly do­nate a san­i­tary nap­kin. This be­gan from March 25 and runs un­til June 25, 2019.

Ra­dio and tele­vi­sion per­son­al­i­ty Whit­ney Hus­bands has tak­en on the role as brand am­bas­sador for #End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty and will be joined by a host of oth­er young fe­male pub­lic fig­ures in­clud­ing Doc­tor Anasha Tewari-Bridge­lal, The­ma Williams, Jade Camp­bell, DJ Char­lotte, and Roxy and Paris James. These young women, in ad­di­tion to the Help­ing Her Foun­da­tion, will use their in­flu­ence on so­cial me­dia to bring at­ten­tion to the cause and ad­vo­cate for the needs of women fac­ing pe­ri­od pover­ty.

“As adults, it is our du­ty to do every­thing in our pow­er to re­move the ob­sta­cles which pro­hib­it young peo­ple from ad­vanc­ing in life,” said Hus­bands.

“Get­ting your pe­ri­od should not be op­pres­sive. With the End Pe­ri­od Pover­ty Ini­tia­tive, we can re­move the stig­ma and start a new era of aware­ness and sup­port for our young women.”

“#End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty can be an im­por­tant cat­a­lyst for change in T&T”, stat­ed Donel­la De Ver­teuil, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er, Proc­ter & Gam­ble (main dis­trib­u­tor of Al­ways).

“It is un­ac­cept­able that any­one should miss out on in­te­gral op­por­tu­ni­ties due to the lack of ac­cess to pe­ri­od pro­tec­tion. I am ex­treme­ly proud to be part of this pro­gramme which can tru­ly im­prove the lives of our young women and give them the con­fi­dence to break any bound­aries to their suc­cess.”

Pe­ri­od Pover­ty is a glob­al is­sue. With­out ed­u­ca­tion, women and girls around the world will not be able to take the steps to reach their true po­ten­tial. Girls should be able to fo­cus on their ed­u­ca­tion and their fu­ture with­out be­ing wor­ried about or em­bar­rassed by their pe­ri­od.