2021 Menstrual Health Awareness Day

Welcome to SAPP’s 2021 Menstrual Health Day blog post!

Wow, it’s been an entire year since we got up and started running! In the span of this time, SAPP has extended to several locations including SAPP Milpitas, SAPP Cupertino, and SAPP Union City. Our locations have also collected over 20,000 menstrual products to provide to those in need. On this day in 2020, we established our CAPP-IT volunteer program for volunteers to create menstrual care packages and letters for shelters as well! Throughout the year, we have partnered up with organizations including SAVE, CityTeam, The Awesome Foundation, America’s Promise Alliance, and PERIOD.

Let’s talk about some news that has happened around the globe. Many people have started to work and spread information about the problem and its effects are being seen. The most important outcome is that the topic of periods is becoming less taboo, and this has led to more people having discussion about it. A major person who wanted to help was Amika George who founded Free Periods, an organization in the U.K. They have played a major role in the U.K., in making progress to come to a solution. They have organized protests and partnerships to make a change. They worked with the Red Box Project and the government in order to provide period products in public places such as bathrooms and schools.

A second organization is PERIOD, who work in the U.S. to bring social awareness to the problem along with period products. They have an online form where organizations can fill out in order to receive period products, a step we took with the beginning of our organization. Another major group is Dignity Period who work in Ethiopia to provide period products to those who are suffering from period poverty. They also take a major step in helping work to decrease the period stigma as to help make it easier for those suffering from period poverty to find ways to get products. A third organization called Period Tax has helped with removing the luxury tax many states place on period products. They have removed it in states such as Minnesota, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New York, and others. This step was taken in California but after 2022 we do not know if it will still be in effect.

SAPP will not end just because the school year is about to end. There are opportunities for you and your friends to get involved. The SAPP Team is proud to offer some exclusive future opportunities within SAPP! We really want to involve more underclassmen in our ranks so that our organization can continue even after some of our members have graduated or have decided to retire from SAPP. We will still have CAPP-IT, in which we create care packages, write letters, and have them donated at shelters across the country while earning tens, if not hundreds of service hours! Officer applications are still currently open. As of now, we need supply officers, tech officers, communications officers, and head media officers. This is a great way to get leadership experience and service hours for STEM and social justice related fields. This summer we are also hosting our SAPP Summer Leadership Summit. It is our first summer program which will take place from June 28th to July 2nd. In this time frame, you will complete research projects on period poverty, attend webinars/debate sessions/workshops, and do many more activities related to period poverty. Sign Up at tinyurl.com/2021sappsummerapps for BOTH the officer apps and SLS apps.

Without the help of community donations, SAPP would not exist. Ways you can help us include making physical donations of menstrual goods (tissues, baby wipes, masks, chapsticks, etc) or a tax-deductible monetary donation to our PayPal (paypal.me/sapp4u), venmo (venmo.com/sapp4u), or by writing us a check (contact us for mailing address!). We appreciate any amount you can give us. If you are crafty and would like to do some hands-on experience, you can join our CAPP-IT program and attend our workshops. If these options won’t work for you, spreading awareness about SAPP on social media would be a tremendous contribution too. (IG: @officialsapp FB: @sapp4u)

About the author

Hello! My name is Christina Yang and I am a senior at Irvington High School. Once I did some research for my QUEST project on period poverty, I was astonished at how the issue is not being talked about more. By being a part of SAPP, I hope to spread the word about period poverty and help lessen the issue.