'Period Poverty' Nonprofit Founded By Edison HS Student Wins Grant
FAIRFAX COUNTY, VA — A nonprofit group created by a student at Edison High School in Fairfax County to address “period poverty” received a Global Youth Action Fund award from the International Baccalaureate.
Period101, a nonprofit founded by Edison student Maya Manchester in 2022, addresses the lack of access that some women and girls have to menstrual hygiene products. Edison, through Manchester’s creation of Period101, was the only school in Fairfax County to receive a Global Youth Action award in 2023.
Since its creation, Period101’s chapter at Edison has put together personalized “period product kits” that consist of small bags containing menstrual products, information on where people can access menstrual products, and a motivational note.
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Members of the Edison chapter made 600 period product kits during the 2022-2023 school year. The group also hosted educational events and organized a letter-writing campaign advocating for legislation to address period poverty.
Manchester and fellow senior Laiba Ali, co-presidents of the Edison High School chapter, are hoping to use the IB grant award to start more Period101 groups across the D.C. area and the nation.
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The group is already expanding in the D.C. area. Students at Meridian High School in the City of Falls Church and The Field School in Washington, D.C. have started chapters of Period101. Students interested in starting chapters at their schools can apply on Period101’s website.
Manchester learned about the International Baccalaureate Global Youth Action Fund from the IB coordinator at Edison, one of eight high schools in the Fairfax County Public Schools system that offers an International Baccalaureate diploma program.
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“As I was looking into it, I found out it aligned with what Laiba and I were doing with Period101,” she said about her decision to apply for the Global Youth Action Fund award.
Along with a $3,000 grant award they received in the summer, Manchester and Ali have been receiving leadership training on how to expand organizations and businesses. They’ve met with other Global Youth Action Fund grant recipients from around the world over Zoom and heard from guest speakers.
When they head off to college next fall, both Manchester and Ali are planning to start up Period101 chapters at their schools. Manchester said she wants to study international relations, a field that will allow her to keep working on issues related to human rights and women’s rights, which she said are connected to Period101.
Ali said she intends to pursue a pre-med course of study in college, which will allow her to continue her focus on health advocacy.
In early 2024, Manchester and Ali will start to train younger students at Edison about Period101 so that the chapter can have its leadership in place for the next school year when they are off at college. Other Period101 members will “shadow us” to learn how the chapter operates, Ali said.
Manchester learned about period poverty when she was in eighth grade in the spring of 2020 during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic as people were coming together to find ways to help their neighbors in need. After reading articles on the subject, Manchester realized that access to menstrual products was a problem for some low-income people “because many people don’t think of period products as a necessity.”
Last year, Manchester told Ali about her plans to start the Period101 chapter at Edison. “After she told me about it, I did my own research,” Ali said. “I connected it to my own life and how menstrual hygiene and periods have been a taboo subject in my own culture, and I wanted to change that.”
Period101 has donated period product kits to food pantries such as Food for Others in Fairfax and Bread for the City in D.C., where people can pick up a kit at the same time they are getting food or other donated items.
Over the summer, the IB, an international nonprofit group started in 1968 that offers educational programs, announced that 101 projects in 48 countries, including Manchester’s project, had received the Global Youth Action Fund award, totaling more than $230,000 in student grant funding. The award is designed to recognize students taking the lead to address global challenges.
Young people submitted more than 500 projects for consideration by the International Baccalaureate. Each project supports one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals and goes through an evaluation process. Each awardee receives up to a $3,000 grant to fund their project and mentorship and online training in social entrepreneurship.
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