Written by: Victoria Arutunian
This year senior Maya Baker organized a drive to get menstrual supplies to women in need. Maya is an avid member of her girl scouts troop, and this project was for her to achieve her girl scout gold award. This project's main goal was to educate about menstruation, put an end to the period taboo, and provide hygiene products to those in need. Maya has collaborated with the Key club district and the MAST@FIU key club, and other local girl scouts troops to help collect products and make hand-made encouraging notes to include in the period packs that were made.
Maya’s drive collected over 4,500 products, and they were able to make over 250 packs. They were then dropped off at the Women’s Lotus House. This drive helped a lot of women without access to period essentials and other items they may need. When I asked Maya what this project means to her and her motivation for creating it, this was her response: “I am honestly a huge advocate for women’s health. I would definitely say it is my passion since I want to pursue gynecology. I think there were two instances that really influenced me to make this project specifically. One was when I was driving down Biscayne once, and it was heartbreaking to see that a woman was panhandling (asking for money) and she had really bad period stains.” She then continued to explain more in-depth, “I luckily at the time had some products in my bag at the time to give her, and I knew that access to feminine products was a huge issue, but it was just so shocking to see it myself.”
Her second reason deals with more of the negative stigma and false teachings around periods. She wanted to educate people on the matter and teach them to manage their monthly cycles better. When asked about it, Miss. Baker stated: “a second instance was when I was lifeguarding and one of my coworkers was telling me that she wanted to quit because she couldn’t show up to work while on her period because she lacked the education of how to handle it while being around water.” This second experience catapulted Maya to create her incredibly successful project.
The Periodically Project is one for the books and helped many different women in their times of need. Maya Baker is an exceptional woman and aims to change the way women view their periods, one sanitary product at a time.
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