For the fourth con­sec­u­tive year, Al­ways® will con­tin­ue its out­reach ef­forts by pro­vid­ing thou­sands of girls across Trinidad and To­ba­go with im­proved ac­cess to san­i­tary pads to help meet their month­ly needs. 

Al­ways® says in 2022, the aim is to do­nate over 160,000 san­i­tary pads to sev­en sec­ondary schools in Trinidad and To­ba­go: Coryal Sec­ondary, Mor­vant Laven­tille Sec­ondary, Matu­ra Sec­ondary, Pe­nal Sec­ondary, Pa­lo Seco Sec­ondary, Guaygua­yare Sec­ondary and Spey­side Sec­ondary.

“The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­ac­er­bat­ed con­di­tions like un­em­ploy­ment and high food prices,” Al­ways® notes in a re­lease.  “As a re­sult, pe­ri­od prod­ucts are usu­al­ly not at the top of the pri­or­i­ty list in many house­holds.”

Al­ways® adds: “For teenage girls es­pe­cial­ly, not hav­ing pe­ri­od pro­tec­tion can af­fect her men­tal well-be­ing, thus im­pact­ing school at­ten­dance, aca­d­e­m­ic re­sults and so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties like sports and clubs. In some in­stances, many girls end up miss­ing up to one year of school through­out their school life, which lim­its their po­ten­tial to ex­cel far be­yond pu­ber­ty.”

The Al­ways #End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty cam­paign was of­fi­cial­ly launched on April 1st and will run through to 30th June 2022.

“Dur­ing this time, con­sumers will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to get in­volved with the ini­tia­tive. Every Al­ways pur­chase trig­gers a do­na­tion, for every pack of Al­ways pads pur­chased, Al­ways® will in turn di­rect­ly do­nate to a girl in need,” the com­pa­ny ex­plained.

NGO Kids in Need of Di­rec­tion (KIND) will once again part­ner with Al­ways® to as­sist with the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the 160,000 plus pads, along with the as­sis­tance of the Help­ing Her Foun­da­tion.  Both NGOs—KIND and Help­ing Her Foun­da­tion—have been con­sis­tent­ly rais­ing aware­ness on the is­sue of pe­ri­od pover­ty and have ex­e­cut­ed mul­ti­ple out­reach pro­grammes to com­mu­ni­ties and fe­males in need. The NGOs will as­sist in en­sur­ing the do­na­tion of Al­ways pads are dis­trib­uted to the young girls at the schools.

As part of the cam­paign, a host of so­cial me­dia in­flu­encers will be en­gaged to help in­crease aware­ness, ed­u­cate and ad­vo­cate for the needs of girls and women fac­ing pe­ri­od pover­ty, Al­ways® says. Some of this year’s in­flu­encers are Anasha Tewari-Bridge­lal, Leah Her­bert, Megan Mo­hammed, She­nilee Hazell, The­ma Williams, Whit­ney Hus­bands and Kee­van Lewis.

Busi­ness Unit Head for Proc­ter and Gam­ble at Al­ston’s Mar­ket­ing Com­pa­ny (AM­CO), Resh­ma Geawan, un­der­scored the im­por­tance of the ini­tia­tive.

“Pe­ri­od pover­ty af­fects mil­lions of girls who are held back and even en­dan­gered by not be­ing able to ac­cess men­stru­al care prod­ucts,” she point­ed out.  

“It is dis­tress­ing to know that some girls have to turn to un­safe al­ter­na­tives like toi­let pa­per, rags, and news­pa­per to man­age their pe­ri­ods, and then end up miss­ing out on school and class­es. Lack of ac­cess to pe­ri­od prod­ucts should nev­er stand in the way of a girl and her ed­u­ca­tion,” the AM­CO ex­ec­u­tive stat­ed.

Resh­ma Geawan re­it­er­at­ed Al­ways® com­mit­ment to the cause.

“Al­ways® re­mains com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing that all girls are able to con­fi­dent­ly go to school. We will con­tin­ue to take ac­tion to help #End­Pe­ri­od­Pover­ty,” she pledged.

“To­geth­er, let’s dis­man­tle the stig­ma around men­stru­a­tion and help our girls re­alise their full po­ten­tial,” she urged.