May 1, 2023: Donation drive update at bottom of story
Karen Jiang (IMP Class of 2025) and Lauren Yearwood (IMP Class of 2026) are asking for your help in supporting people affected by period poverty. As members of the Community Women’s Initiative (CWI), they have set up a donation drive to gather menstrual products and other hygiene items for women’s shelters, transition homes, and organizations in Victoria.
Period poverty is the inadequate access to menstrual products. It’s a serious and prevalent problem around the world, including in Canada. Research conducted by Plan International Canada in 2019 found that, nationwide, about 34 per cent of people with uteruses struggle to afford menstrual products for themselves or their dependents, often needing to make budget sacrifices to afford products.
Lauren and Karen say that lack of access can force people to resort to unhygienic practices, such as using products for extended times or using non-menstrual products as replacements, thus increasing the risk of severe complications and infections.
Menstrual products are some of the most requested items at shelters, yet despite their importance, they are often the least donated items.
The main items Karen and Lauren hope to collect through their donation drive are menstrual products like pads, tampons, and reusable items such as menstrual cups. They welcome both individual items and packages. They are also collecting other items highly requested at shelters and transition homes, including travel-sized toiletries, nail clippers, towels and cloths of all sizes, incontinence pull ups, undergarments, socks, and pajamas. All items will be donated to local organizations, including Margaret Laurence House, Our Place, Cridge Transition House for Women, and Sandy Merriman House.
The drive’s 15+ donation boxes can be found at several Discovery Coffee, Habit Coffee, The Lab, and Kharma Salon locations, as well as Yoga Bar, Vancouver Island Women’s Clinic, Lagree West, Forge Training, and Thirdspace Movement. The boxes will be out until at least March 31, but they may be out longer if all goes well. Monetary donations can also be made through the CWI’s GoFundMe campaign.
This is the first CWI donation drive hosted in Victoria, but it is not the first community work done by the group this year. The CWI, which is run by UBC medical students from across the province, has raised over $2,500 for organizations throughout BC and has hosted three other item drives over the past three years. The latest drive raised over $500 and 90 boxes of item donations, which were distributed across the lower mainland. Karen and Lauren say they hope the Victoria drive is as successful.
Along with fundraising and drives, the CWI also works to raise awareness about women’s issues by creating accessible and informative infographics on social media and to empower women by hosting educational workshops and tutoring for people in shelters and recovery homes.
Update
Karen and Lauren collected donations until the last week of April. In two months, they collected 24 boxes of donations—including 11 boxes of menstrual products, five boxes of toiletries, and five boxes of clothing, undergarments, and towels. They donated the items to the Cridge Transition House for Women, Victoria Immigrant & Refugee Society, Sandy Merriman House, Our Place Society, and Greater Victoria Women’s Shelter Society (Margaret Laurence House). They were also able to give monetary donations to some of these organizations through the ongoing fundraising efforts of the CWI.
“We are so, so grateful and in awe of the generosity and kindness of the Victoria community,” says Karen. “Seeing the great reception to our initiative and collecting all the donations made our hearts so warm. Period poverty is such an important cause that we wanted to support, so we are beyond excited to see that it is a cause important to our community as well. We want to express our immense gratitude to the community for supporting our drive, and we want to especially thank the local businesses that hosted our collection boxes.”
The success of this drive encouraged the CWI to organize a similar menstrual product drive in Vancouver, which is currently ongoing. As for Victoria, they are excited to host this drive again next year and to organize other fundraising events in fall 2023.