Combating period poverty in New York City

Carrington Baker founded For Women, By Women, Period in 2021, while still a college student at St. John’s University. Baker watched an online video about “period poverty” – the lack of access to safe and hygienic menstrual products – and decided to take action, creating a nonprofit organization to distribute period products to people in need. She worked with her friends and family to gather menstrual supplies to distribute to city agencies and nonprofits across the city. The organization has since grown to 17 members and distributed over 350,000 menstrual products in New York City.

New York Nonprofit Media spoke with Baker about the organization’s mission, her future plans and the reasons that period poverty still exists in 2024. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did you come to found this organization?

Back in 2021 when I was a student, college was not normal because of COVID-19, so I had a lot of downtime. And I was volunteering at a food pantry, seeing how that part of things worked. I ended up watching a YouTube video about homeless women in New York City experiencing their periods. It was the first time I was ever exposed to period poverty. I was new to everything when I first watched that video, and by the end of it, I was just taken aback. I was really upset. How did I not realize it’s an issue? And then I also realized, if I had this experience, I’m sure others have the experience of not even knowing what period poverty is. You always see poverty associated with food or housing insecurity. Then I said, “Hey, what can I do in my community to help?” I didn’t think it would turn into something this amazing, honestly, and I’m so happy it did my first time.

I started asking my friends to help me with this project. Everyone was eager to hop on it, because it’s easy to connect to it, because we all experience periods and then thinking that people are going without what they need every month – they’re using things like socks or cardboard or toilet paper, using a tampon for longer than it’s supposed to, or using a pad for longer than supposed to. It was easy for a lot of us to connect to it, and then from there, we just said, “How can we do this?” And since I was at that food pantry that I was volunteering at at the time, I was able to see on the back end how it works. Then from there, it just took off and it became something more. But I'm super happy that it did, and I’m happy we’re able to help so many people.

Do you do advocacy work as well?

We have our three pillars: we have education, advocacy and then distribution. Right now, we’re in our third year, so we’ve figured out our distribution side of things. We distributed over 350,000 products since we first started in New York City. We’ve now moved on to education, and the next thing we’re really trying to do more of is advocacy, and make period products free at some point in the future. That’s something we’re breaking into currently. Logistics-wise, as a nonprofit, there are things we have to be mindful of (when doing political advocacy) due to what we have filed with the IRS, so we’re breaking into it slowly.

Tell me about the educational programs for youth.

Our education pillar breaks into three things so we have more youth-based education. This past March, we did a workshop with Girl Scouts in Queens. What we’re trying to do is give young people what we didn’t have growing up. Growing up, the extent of sex education was, “Don’t have sex. Yes, you’re going to have a period. Don’t talk to anyone about it.” That wasn’t really a good education of what to expect. A lot of what I’ve learned, I have figured out on my own.

What we’re trying to do is give young people a safe space to ask those questions, so they’re not so scared going into their first cycle. Everything is always age-appropriate with permission from parents to do so, but we just figured that it’s really important for the next generation to have a different approach toward sexual health and sexual education. One side is our talk circles, and the other side is our distribution. A lot of communities, especially communities of color, do not have education in terms of what other products are out there. There’s a lot more than just pads nowadays, and there’s a lot of misconceptions with utilizing tampons. We are hopefully trying to debunk those stigmas while also respecting their religion and their cultural views as well.

We’re really trying to make sure we’re giving education to each demographic, because as we age, as women and people who menstruate, everything changes so much. We also eventually want to get into menopause down the line, because that’s something I feel like is not discussed at all, and we want to hopefully change that for the future.

How do you have that conversation with young people while also still respecting their backgrounds, culture, etc.?

What helps our organization first is our diversity in the organization. We have people from all different backgrounds that are able to speak to this based on their personal life experiences. That’s helped us a lot to figure out how we navigate this, especially when there’s a language barrier as well. The best way we go about doing this is giving them the education in an unbiased, nonjudgmental way. It allows us to open the conversation for them to ask us questions and then give them the products. We’re giving them education and still letting them make their own decision on it, but we’re just still giving them the opportunity to hear and ask questions they need to ask.

What are you hearing in terms of not only the need, but the impact?

It’s honestly been great. People are happy to see us when we come, which makes me happy, because our team feels that love from people that we’re helping out. It’s just nice to be able to support people in this way because no one has really been doing it up until this point.

Why do you think menstrual inequity still occurs today in 2024, even in a place like New York City?

The biggest thing is no one’s paying attention to it. There were other organizations that existed before us that do the work we do in other cities, but I didn’t see that in New York City, which is why I started my own. The conversation is getting a little bit more popular now, especially post-Roe v. Wade being overturned and everything. At the end of the day, a lot of men are in charge of our government and all the governing bodies that are around, and they're not thinking about periods at all.

Then on top of it, when I’ve spoken with other people in different countries, they have made period products free in their country. But then once you make them free, it’s about: How are you going to get them to people? And that is something that stuck out to me. The work doesn’t stop once they become free, because the issue they have now run into is getting them to the people that need them. At the end of the day, funding has to be put in the right places for those resources to be given out to the right people.

Even though New York has enacted some legislation to alleviate period poverty, there are still some people still experiencing period poverty. What do you think we can do as a society to make sure period poverty is no longer an issue?

The first step is organizations like my organization, and also many other amazing organizations across the country, existing just so that we can change the conversation around periods in general, so we talk about them more. If we talked about them, more people would be more aware that many people who menstruate are going without these products. The next thing would be to really (increase) funding. The government needs to start funding homeless shelters, funding these mutual aid organizations, to give them the proper budgets to purchase these products. Because as we all know, period products are so expensive.

Then also, one thing that’s amazing, and I would love to see more of, is a lot of awesome menstrual hygiene companies that support nonprofits. They donate to nonprofits a lot when you purchase products. If that can continue, especially some of these really big companies, if a lot of these brands hopped on with that to support nonprofits, we could continue to do the work that we need to do to help all those people that are in need who can’t go out and purchase their own items.

What’s your vision for your organization and its mission at large moving forward?

We really would like to have a presence in many cities across the United States, especially those cities who don’t have already existing organizations doing the work that we do. We’d love to expand because period poverty is everywhere, especially as the world is changing. The economy is getting crazier. People are really in a lot of difficult situations. We want to be a resource. We want to expand and continue our growth. The other side of it is pushing our advocacy, really getting into that space and finding where we're going to fit in for that. And also our education pillar, I’m super proud of it.

Our impact team does an amazing job putting together all the workshops that we do, and I would love to just see that continue to flourish and grow. Because everyone, when they come to the workshop, you can see the comfort everyone builds during it, and it makes me super happy, because we just need to support each other. That’s the biggest thing of what we do: women supporting women, just being there for each other, and just offering a safe space. I hope that continues to expand and get noticed in the city because there are awesome workshops that we put together. We work with awesome brands on them, and then eventually, fingers crossed, we'll have an office space in the city.

If you could wave a magic wand, what would you change?

Period products would be free, and they would be everywhere. Public restrooms, libraries, airports, colleges, the Walmart bathroom – everywhere, so we can menstruate with dignity at the end of the day. Everyone who’s going through a period, they don’t have to feel that shame that they feel because they can’t get what they need. Also, I would hope that by making these products free and accessible, it’s keeping people who menstruate in school, it’s keeping them at work, it’s keeping them continuing to do what they need to do. I hope in my generation, we can do it. I feel confident that we can make it happen, especially with everyone paying attention to it more.