A group of Girl Scouts in western Ohio took matters into their own hands recently to make life easier for the girls in their school.
The middle schoolers said they weren’t allowed to carry their bags around school, which meant they didn’t have anywhere to put their feminine hygiene products — and their uniforms didn’t have pockets, theytoldGood Morning America. So, they had to go to the school nurse to get what they needed.
Until now. The Girl Scouts approached the school’s parent-teacher organization and proposed to put a large locker with several cubbies into a bathroom at the school, they toldGMA.
“We never really set out to really change the world with our project, but we knew that it would make a world of difference to the girls in our school,” one of the Girl Scouts, Reagan, told the site.
Courtesy Jen Strickler
School officials approved the project last year and the girls used some of the money from their Girl Scout cookie sales to pay for the locker. Photos showed the children smiling as they worked together to put the locker together themselves.
“This project is important to us because it encourages girls more, and [makes] them feel comfortable at school and confident,” another Girl Scout, Alexis, toldGMA. “It’s really fun to help out girls in our community.”
The sixth-graders said their schoolmates were excited to learn about the locker, as they have grown tired of “trying to sneak around their products.” Now, Reagan said she hopes their good deed can prompt even more change.
This isn’t the first time Girl Scouts have fought for better access to menstrual products. Earlier this year, a pair of Brooklyn, New York, Girl Scouts announced that they had finished their two-year investigation into whether local schools met “menstrual equality” requirements, according tothe state’s Girl Scouts website.
They found that only 18 percent of middle schools in their district metthe state’s menstrual equity standards, and most lacked the proper sanitary bins for the students.
“So many girls in public schools don’t have what they need in their daily lives and nobody even talks about it,” 14-year-old Skyler Kim-Schellinger, one of the girls who led the project, said, according to the website.
Thanks to Kim-Schellinger and Arushi Kher’s efforts, their principal vowed to install new sanitary bins.
“It feels good to be the voice for our peers,” Kher said, according to the Girl Scouts website. “Our community was the middle school’s girls and somebody needs to represent them. I’m glad we were able to.”
source: people.com
