CORNELIUS, N.C. — A Hough High School junior is on a mission to eliminate period poverty for women who aren't able to afford sanitary products.
The Pink Bin Project aims to provide women with easy access to feminine hygiene products. Emma Dulin created the initiative two years ago after hearing stories of women having to miss school or work because they couldn't afford or didn't have access to period supplies.
"I really was not aware of period poverty or what it was or that anybody my age or younger, older, experienced, they had to go about their everyday lives worrying about how they were able to get feminine hygiene products,” Dulin said. "It hit me so hard that there were girls my age that had to worry about something, and they couldn't even talk about it because of how stigmatized it is."
According to a medical study, an estimated 500 million women and girls around the world lack access to menstrual products and hygiene facilities.
Dulin decided to change that. She now has bins at five locations across Cornelius and Davidson. She's collected thousands of feminine hygiene products to donate to local charities and would like to see the project expand to help more women.
Dulin also hopes the project provides women with a comfortable space to discuss period poverty and destigmatize the issue
"When I just initially start a conversation talking about menstruation poverty and The Pink Bin Project and things like that, it automatically kind of just shatters the stigma for everybody else,” Dulin said.
The Pink Bin Project is working to highlight this issue and make periods part of the conversation.
Dulin has set up a GoFundMe page for monetary donations, which she said will be used to purchase more bins and more feminine hygiene products in bulk.
Contact Kendall Morris at kmorris2@wcnc.com and follow her on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
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