Girl Up organizes menstrual product drive for women’s shelter
Students trickled into room 361 with art supplies, a large cardboard box and Oreo cookies. On the agenda was a period product drive.
Long standing club Girl Up, run by sophomore Jolie Revis, senior Charlotte Smith and sophomore Gianna Grevina, creates projects to aid women’s rights issues in and outside of the school. They are currently focused on organizing a period product drive to donate to women’s homeless shelters.
Co-president Jolie Revis said products are necessary for keeping clean but are extremely inaccessible.
“Period products are really important for hygiene but also really expensive, and almost impossible to live without if you have a uterus and get periods. It’s a need that’s overlooked, so we want to help make sure that need is spotlighted.” Revis said.
The drive’s drop box, set to be in the atrium, will be welcoming donations for 2 weeks. Afterwards, the box will be shipped to a women’s shelter, where items will be distributed to those in need.
While the club’s recent meetings have been focused around organizing the drive, the plans for the upcoming year range from discussions about feminism in middle schools to bake sales.
This year, a general goal of the club is to emphasize the importance of feminism within different communities. Co-president Gianna Grevina said that in order to extend the message of the club, they must encourage a new demographic to join.
“I feel a goal that we’ve had a lot of discussions about—and there’s been disagreement in the club about this—but, I’ve always wanted to get more boys into the club,” Grevina said. At the moment we have one boy in our club, and he’s amazing, but I feel that feminism is supposed to be equality between genders.”
Co-board member Sydney Freese said that feminism is about uplifting one another.
“Feminism means bringing everyone up. It means not tearing others down to bring others up, which I think can sometimes be interpreted that way. But, I think that feminism is more about creating equality for everyone,” Freese said.
The club has made plans to speak at middle schools about the meaning of feminism and how it is not simply a woman’s fight.
“We’ve wanted to raise awareness on what feminism really is and break this stereotype of it being ‘a girl’s thing’ or ‘a girl’s fight,’ when it’s supposed to be everyone’s fight,” Smith said. “That’s something that’s been on our minds, with trying to raise awareness on what it really means.”