I went to Period Action Day, here's what I've learned.

Although we are not connected to Period as a nonprofit, I was super excited to gain knowledge from guest speakers during Period's Period Action Day to help us be a better nonprofit and to learn more about the struggles of period poverty. Unfortunately, I was able to only go to 2 out of 3 events, but the two I saw were amazing. Here's what I've learned!

Session One: Community Organizing and Strategy Training with Midwest Academy

During this session, Mrs. Jay West from the Midwest Academy taught fellow menstrual activists how to effectively organize for social issues and how to use strategies to create a bigger outreach.

We first talked about the huge spectrum issues lay on and how they are addressed. At the very ends of the spectrum there is social work that works with these huge systems, then at the other end is direct action organizing that goes against these huge broken systems.

This goes into the main point of her talk, Direct Action Organizing. Direct Action Organizing is defined as, "The process by which people impacted by injustice take collective action to build power to win meaningful change in their lives and communities." This involves changes in policy, practice, and resource distribution made by powerful decision makers. So how do we do this?

Well, Jay gave us the three principles of Direct Action Organizing, these are...

1. Win concrete improvements in people's lives

2. Make people aware of their own power

3. Alter the relations of power (Building strong organizations, pass new laws and regulations, elect progressive candidates to public office, and overall, build the movement)

Once a problem and solution is clearly defined, the faster a strategy will be implemented. Just like goals we make for ourselves, for activism goals must be SMART. They need to be reachable but bold, able to build organizational power, and broadly felt but other common people.

This can be solved through good strategy development. The Midwest Academy presents a 5 section strategy chart to make changes in communities. We will put this down below for you all to look at.

Session Two: Youth Activists in the Menstrual Movement

A look into five youth activists and their work that fight for the menstrual movement; hosted by a Teen Vogue writer.

Five panelists spoke about why they've gotten into the menstrual movement whether if it's empowerment from periods, recognizing issues locally, and just wanting to make a change.

It was interesting seeing a view point of these panelists, these are the consistent points I saw the most:

1. The same cycles of oppression are still here today from decades ago regarding period poverty, what our grandmothers have faced is basically what we have to deal with in present times.

2. The fight for period poverty is very intersectional with environmentalism, homelessness, racism, etc. Such as feminine products themselves, they are hard to attain (income issues), primarily available to white women/girls for free while marginalized communities have to either pay or have no access (race issues) and pads and tampons can be very harmful to the environment based on their chemicals (environmentalism)

3. If we want to have free products available in public spaces such as schools and store bathrooms, there needs to be a voice. Using the tips we got from Mrs. West is just the start to this battle.

4. We have to open our ideas up to acknowledging the nonwestern ways that other cultures handle periods. Sometimes there is stigma, other times pads and tampons are rarely used. Acknowledging other cultures treatments and materials can broaden our points of view and can let us respect other ways of handling an issue every women goes through.

If you would like further information, please check out the 2020 Period Action Day website with these videos posted + others that weren't mentioned here in the link below!

https://www.periodactionday.com/