In ho­n­our of In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day 2023, Massy Stores in part­ner­ship with Bry­den PI, Unilever and Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion do­nat­ed over $50k worth of fem­i­nine hy­giene prod­ucts to five Non-Prof­it Or­ga­ni­za­tions- St. Jude’s Home for Girls, The Shel­ter, I am Laven­tille Foun­da­tion, Goshen Home and Fem­i­nitt who work to pro­tect and pro­vide for vul­ner­a­ble girls and women in com­mu­ni­ties across Trinidad and To­ba­go. 

“Many women across the coun­try face is­sues such as pe­ri­od pover­ty, so­cial dis­place­ment, un­equal em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties and abuse. First­ly, I must rec­og­nize the ex­em­plary work of these or­ga­ni­za­tions who pro­vide safe spaces and ad­vo­cate for women in our coun­try. I wish to al­so thank our part­ners at Unilever, Bry­den PO and of course, Massy Dis­tri­b­u­tion for an­swer­ing our call for sup­port and join­ing us in mak­ing this con­tri­bu­tion,” said Rox­ane De Fre­itas, CEO, Massy Stores. Joy Ben­jamin, Coun­cilor for St. Barb’s and Chi­napoo Gov­ern­ment Schools, as well as the Co-Founder of the I am Laven­tille Foun­da­tion, ex­pressed her deep grat­i­tude to Massy Stores, U by Ko­tex and Dove, for sup­port­ing their work­shop com­mem­o­rat­ing IWD 2023. She stat­ed, “Your gen­er­ous do­na­tion is ex­treme­ly ben­e­fi­cial and will be put to good use by the women in the com­mu­ni­ty as we con­tin­ue on our mis­sion to en­gage women through holis­tic de­vel­op­ment.” 

Fem­i­nitt, an NGO that works with young women, girls and sex­u­al di­verse groups to sup­port and sen­si­tize them to the grow­ing gen­der in­equal­i­ties, was an­oth­er re­cip­i­ent present at the in­for­mal han­dover. Chanelle Beat­rice, (Ag) Co Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor said, “We know that the is­sue of pe­ri­od pover­ty is a hu­man rights is­sue and can on­ly be solved by uti­liz­ing a whole so­ci­ety ap­proach- this means all hands on deck. You have shown the pow­er of the cor­po­rate Trin­ba­go and the im­pact­ful change that we can en­act when we come to­geth­er. These pe­ri­od prod­ucts will be used to stock our 11 Care Banks across Trinidad and To­ba­go.” 

“Massy Stores has been in­vest­ing in a fe­male em­pow­er­ment pro­gram, called LIFE (Lessons in Fe­male Em­pow­er­ment) for the past 10 years, to de­vel­op our women across the or­ga­ni­za­tion. Over that time, we have di­rect­ly im­pact­ed 250 fe­male em­ploy­ees. That trans­for­ma­tion in many in­stances ex­tend­ed to mak­ing a pos­i­tive im­pact on those around them at work, at home and in their com­mu­ni­ties. We have so many suc­cess sto­ries from this pro­gram rang­ing from ca­reer ad­vance­ment to the res­o­lu­tion of some tru­ly chal­leng­ing sit­u­a­tions and I be­lieve that this con­tri­bu­tion to these im­pact­ful or­ga­ni­za­tion is an ex­ten­sion of the val­ue we hold for the women in our span of care. 

The han­dover of hy­giene prod­ucts took place on the 6th of March at Massy Stores Head Of­fice where the five NPOs re­ceived the do­na­tions