By Geraldine Penney, PSAC North NT Regional Women’s Committee
Ending Period Poverty is something that we, at PSAC North NT Regional Women’s Committee, hold close to our hearts. For the past three years we have contacted the schools in the Northwest Territories to see if they wanted us to send them any sanitary napkins/tampons. We have mailed/dropped off and delivered many boxes and many dollars’ worth of products to NT schools.
So when we heard that The United Way was doing Tampon Tuesdays we were not only happy to get involved by spreading awareness on our Facebook page, we also spread the word to PSAC Locals and made a generous donation ourselves.
United Way across Canada has been involved in organizing Tampon Tuesday for several years now. In 2021 in the NT, there was only one small collection in Inuvik. This is the first year NT United Way has organized Tampon Tuesday on such a big scale in the NT. We were very happy to help the United Way this year and we hope to continue to help in years to come.
So many women experience period poverty, which means they can’t afford to buy sanitary napkins. Many girls miss school because they don’t have sanitary napkins. This is the reason we decided to contact all schools in NT to try to stop this from happening. Every girl has the right to go to school and not to have to stay home every month when they have their period because they or their families can’t afford sanitary napkins. Many women also miss work and social activities because they don’t have sanitary products.
Our committee along with The United Way are trying to prevent Period Poverty from happening in the NT. There is so much work to be done on Period Poverty all over the world. Our committee believes that the Government of the Northwest Territories should be supplying sanitary products to all schools and women shelters. We are working towards creating a petition to make this happen, fingers crossed.
In celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8th, we made a donation to The United Way Tampon Tuesday project, and we have also donated sanitary products to Aurora College in Yellowknife for anyone in need. Hopefully, next year we can again partner with The United Way and help give Tampon Tuesday a larger presence in the Northwest Territories.