The Parsons Area Community Foundation Wednesday presented the Care Cupboard Hygiene Pantry with a mini-grant of $1,000 to purchase period products to donate to Parsons USD 503 schools, helping address period poverty in the community.
Socio-economic inequalities impact families daily as they struggle to provide basic needs for survival, leaving many to have to decide which needs hold the greatest priority. Material basic necessities, like period products, are often foregone.
“When they have to decide between putting food on the table, their next meal, and staying healthy and clean, it is going to go the way of food 100% of the time,” pastor and Care Cupboard board member Travis Ball said.
Such situations create community health dilemmas such as period poverty, described as having insufficient access to menstrual products, education, and sanitation facilities. This is a world-wide problem, especially evident in third world countries, but the issue is prevalent even in the U.S. As costs of feminine hygiene products have sky-rocketed, and with the majority of states taxing menstrual hygiene products, 23% of teenagers in the U.S. struggled to afford period products in 2023 and two-thirds of teens reported feeling stressed due to lack of access to menstrual products in their school, a survey commissioned by Thinx, Inc. & PERIOD found.
Evidence of the problem is seen in Parsons USD 503 schools, where nurses, and even some teachers, keep period products on hand for their female students who approach them with the need during the school day. For some girls the arrival of their period may just be unexpected and they did not bring products with them. Others simply do not have any to bring. Either way, schools’ staff steps in to help.
School nurse Amber Jones pulled random data from their health offices for three consecutive days in one month, and in those three days alone at the high school she received 58 visits for feminine hygiene products, 26 visits for over the counter medication for period pain, 30 visits for non-medicinal period pain relief (like a hot pack) and eight visits for emergency undergarment replacement. At PHS, there are 183 female students. The middle school showed similar numbers. There are 177 female students at the middle school. Guthridge and even Garfield school had some requests.
Receiving the gift from Care Cupboard Hygiene Pantry was “huge,” Jones said.
The provision of period products usually eats into her budget, but Jones explained it is worth it, as it helps reduce the stress for the female students so they can focus on school work, it keeps them in school and allows their parents to remain at work.
Ball said many people do not realize that SNAP (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) for low income families does not cover the costs of non-food items, like toilet paper, period products, hygiene items or diapers for children, and the cost of these items makes them financially unobtainable for many on a regular basis.
Given the negative association with periods and stigmas that continue to be reinforced by society, the problem of period poverty is not addressed in many communities or schools. Only about 4% of those recognizing inaccessibility to period products as a health related crisis know where to get free or reduced price products, Ball said.
The Care Cupboard Hygiene Pantry is seeking to raise awareness of the problem, and in its own community of Parsons address the problem, founder Aquila Winchell said this last month the Care Cupboard provided 338 families with hygiene products, a number of which received menstrual hygiene items.
Winchell said there are 71 million women and girls between the ages of 12 and 44 living in the United States, and of those 1 in 7 lives below the Federal Poverty Level. Sixty percent of those families experience financial distress and struggle to keep up with their bills and cover unexpected expenses.
“The known need is out there, but nobody knows how to meet it,” Ball said. “The ability to have more people know where they can go, where those safe places are to get products is pivotal. The need is so big.”
Winchell said in addition to the school nurse, and the Care Cupboard Hygiene Pantry, the Parsons Public Library also provides free feminine hygiene products, with the help of the Aunt Flow program.
“Anyone, anytime (during library business hours) can go in and get free product,” Winchell said. “They don’t have to ask. It’s just there.”