Period Poverty Activist by Makayla

Period Poverty Activist by Makayla - April 2023 Scholarship Essay

The numerous skills that I have gained from school such as effective communication, problem-solving, collaboration, and time management can be applied to my future job of becoming a period poverty activist. My school has prepared me to excel in academic institutions and the global market because of the opportunities presented to me. For example, I had the wonderful opportunity to present a speech in front of my civics class about a given issue in the world. The issue that I presented was about period poverty and my school doesn’t provide enough sanitary products for each student. As a result, students tend to free-bleed or use other unsanitary products because there aren't enough pads for everyone in the school bathrooms. After I expressed how I would approach this issue my teacher offered to assist me in ways that I contribute to providing more sanitary products in my school's bathrooms.

After I made my speech and gained support from my teacher I wanted to take a step further and work to end period poverty in Illinois. My school teaches students to always have a plan for each goal because without a plan you won’t know how many steps or how long it would take for you to reach your goal. Using the knowledge and skills that I acquired from my school I was able to create a step-by-step plan as to how I was going to create my non-profit organization “Periodiva”. The first step that I would take is to host speeches at elementary, middle, and high schools to inform students about period poverty, how they can contribute to ending period poverty, and how Periodiva is working to end period poverty.

The next step that I will take is creating an app that explains how period poverty affects individuals all over the world, periodiva’s main goal, and ways that you can contribute to ending period poverty. The first page of our app will display four buttons: Period Facts, Donation Forms, About Us, and Periodiva Drive. The about us section is explaining periodiva mission which is to destigmatize periods and increase accessibility to sanitary products. Videos of people’s experiences dealing with period poverty will be placed in the period facts section. The donation form section is for users that want to donate sanitary items to our company. The last section is for users that want to stay updated about our upcoming period drives.

As a company, we understand that some people may not have access to the internet or a cellular device so we plan on doing door-to-door campaigns. We will hold one-on-one conversations with citizens to tell them about periodiva’s mission to end period poverty and about upcoming period drives. We will host period drives four days out of the week in various areas of Illinois to provide people in need with period kits. The period kits will have three pads, two tampons, a pack of new underwear, and a pack of baby wipes. We will donate period kits to elementary, middle, and high schools as well as homeless shelters in Illinois.

In conclusion, I will be making a positive impact in Illinois by providing period kits to people in need. I will be providing homeless people with period kits to ensure that they feel confident and clean despite being in a hard financial situation. Moreover, there will be period kits in school bathrooms so that students don’t have to constantly worry about properly cleaning themselves. My goal in life is to completely end period poverty in Illinois. I hope to reach this goal in the next 5 years so that I can work on shipping period kits to other states so that everyone can have access to period products.