+
upworthy
Let's Do More Together

Period poverty keeps women and girls from reaching their full potential, in the U.S. and around the world

Period poverty keeps women and girls from reaching their full potential, in the U.S. and around the world
Photo by Annika Gordon on Unsplash
True

There are few certainties in life, but one thing women and girls can generally depend on is a monthly period. Come hell or high water, Aunt Flo is likely gonna show, and it's almost always going to happen at an inopportune time.

Now imagine what life looks like for those who lack access to period products.

Katie is in the 6th grade. She lives in the poorest county in Kentucky, where almost everyone works in coal — and there is too little education and too much meth. Katie's family doesn't have enough money to eat or keep the power on consistently. Personal hygiene is an afterthought, which is why when she gets her first period, she has no choice but to stuff old washcloths into her underwear before going to school.

Later that week, when she runs out of washcloths, she simply stops going.


For girls like Katie, it's easy to see how menstruation each month can stand in the way of a high school graduation or keeping a summer job — and could eventually prevent them from climbing out of poverty altogether.

According to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics, approximately 500 million women and girls live without access to essential tools for menstrual hygiene management, such as period products and handwashing facilities, but what many of them do have is a boatload of shame. Across the board, menstrual health is hugely underfunded and over stigmatized, leaving people like Katie at a huge disadvantage.

Thorsten Kiefer, co-founder of WASH United — a non-profit organization that focuses on improving menstrual hygiene and human rights worldwide — told Upworthy that he wants to see period poverty become a thing of the past. His goal is to "create a world in which no woman or girl is limited because of her period by 2030," because Kiefer hates injustice.

That general distaste for ignorance and injustice is what led him to pursue a career in human rights law, and later spurred the idea for WASH United. It bothered Kiefer that no one wanted to talk about toilets and handwashing, and as a result, people suffered. "I guess I'm really interested in taboo social issues no one else wants to touch," he said.

In 2013, WASH United took their work a step further and created Menstrual Hygiene Day (MH Day), a global advocacy platform that brings together the voices and actions of non-profits, government agencies, individuals, the private sector and the media to promote good menstrual hygiene management for all women and girls. The main goal of MH Day is to break the silence, raise awareness and change negative social norms surrounding periods.

P&G

This goal is why his organization partners with brands like Always to bring the issues around menstrual health to the forefront.

Always ramped up production and shipping of pads in response to the COVID-19 crisis, with a goal of getting products into stores quickly and donating them to those in need through charity partners. So far, the company has donated over five million period products across the United States, as well as worked to find relevant ways to ensure that girls and their families have access to information and resources that they need to navigate their periods with confidence.

Clearly, the more attention periods get, the more resources will become available for the people who need them the most.

"I'm most proud of the MH Day partnership as a whole — of how this extremely heterogeneous group of organizations ranging from tiny, grassroots non-governmental organizations to corporate giants like Procter & Gamble sings together like one gigantic choir to make our voice heard loud and clear for one single purpose: empower women and girls to achieve their full potential and realize their dreams," Kiefer said.

"Maybe 'proud' is not even the right word. To see MH Day in action just makes me really happy."

Girls like Katie, if armed with period products, an education and a supportive environment, can change the world. The question is, will we help them get what they need?

To support this effort and other programs like it, all you have to do is keep doing what you're doing — like shopping for period products. Turn your everyday actions into acts of good every day at P&G Good Everyday.

Community

How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

True

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

Keep ReadingShow less

A guy passes out on his bed eating pizza.

A 29-year-old woman had a baby girl, and after a brief maternity leave, she had to return to work. She couldn't afford childcare, so her husband, 35, reluctantly agreed to watch the baby while she was at work.

“It’s important to know that he’s been unemployed since 2021,” the woman wrote on Reddit’s AITA subforum. “He receives benefits. It’s also important to know that he’s extremely lazy. He doesn’t cook, clean, or help out in any way. I was nervous about leaving her home with her father, but I had no choice.”

The mother had reason to be worried about leaving her baby home alone with her husband, but in the beginning, things seemed fine. “When I came back from work, she was clean and sleeping. The next few times I came home, he was either playing with her, feeding her, or out for a walk with her. I was happy,” she wrote.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo via Canva, @WhattheADHD/Twitter

The 'bionic reading' font is designed to help keep you focused and read faster.

Reading is a fundamental tool of learning for most people, which is why it's one of the first things kids learn in school and why nations set literacy goals.

But even those of us who are able to read fluently might sometimes struggle with the act of reading itself. Perhaps we don't read as quickly as we wish we could or maybe our minds wander as our eyes move across the words. Sometimes we get to the end of a paragraph and realize we didn't retain anything we just read.

People with focus or attention issues can struggle with reading, despite having no actual reading disabilities. It can be extremely frustrating to want to read something and have no issues with understanding the material, yet be unable to keep your mind engaged with the text long enough to get "into" what you're reading.

Keep ReadingShow less
Pets

Family brings home the wrong dog from daycare until their cats saved the day

A quick trip to the vet confirmed the cats' and family's suspicions.

Family accidentally brings wrong dog home but their cats knew

It's not a secret that nearly all golden retrievers are identical. Honestly, magic has to be involved for owners to know which one belongs to them when more than one golden retriever is around. Seriously, how do they all seem have the same face? It's like someone fell asleep on the copy machine when they were being created.

Outside of collars, harnesses and bandanas, immediately identifying the dog that belongs to you has to be a secret skill because at first glance, their personalities are also super similar. That's why it's not surprising when one family dropped off their sweet golden pooch at daycare and to be groomed, they didn't notice the daycare sent out the wrong dog.

See, not even their human parents can tell them apart because when the swapped dog got home, nothing seemed odd to the owners at first. She was freshly groomed so any small differences were quickly brushed off. But this accidental doppelgänger wasn't fooling her feline siblings.

Keep ReadingShow less

Only child asks her friends what it's like to grow up with siblings.

Ahhh, siblings. Sometimes they're your best friends and other times your living room turns into an MMA octagon over the remote control. If you grew up with brothers and sisters, it's hard to imagine what it would be like to be an only child. (That's not to say you didn't dream about it when your sister stole your favorite shirt for the 30th time.)

But not everyone has siblings, so it can be equally as hard for someone who grew up as an only child to picture what it would be like to have them. Only children also likely had moments where they dreamt of having a little brother or sister, not realizing the literal torment siblings can inflict on each other.

TikTok creator Lonnie IIV recently posted a video of himself with two other friends seemingly out to lunch, when the girl in the group asked what it was like to grow up with siblings. In less than a minute she realized she lucked out being an only child because her two guy friends gave her a crash course in sibling behavior.

Keep ReadingShow less
Photo: courtesy BioCarbon Engineering/WikiCommons

Technology is the single greatest contributor to climate change but it may also soon be used to offset the damage we've done to our planet since the Industrial Age began.

In September 2018, a project in Myanmar used drones to fire "seed missiles" into remote areas of the country where trees were not growing. Less than a year later, thousands of those seed missiles have sprouted into 20-inch mangrove saplings that could literally be a case study in how technology can be used to innovate our way out of the climate change crisis.

Keep ReadingShow less
Health

Artists got fed up with these 'anti-homeless spikes.' So they made them a bit more ... comfy.

"Our moral compass is skewed if we think things like this are acceptable."

Photo courtesy of CC BY-ND, Immo Klink and Marco Godoy

Spikes line the concrete to prevent sleeping.


These are called "anti-homeless spikes." They're about as friendly as they sound.

As you may have guessed, they're intended to deter people who are homeless from sitting or sleeping on that concrete step. And yeah, they're pretty awful.

The spikes are a prime example of how cities design spaces to keep homeless people away.

Keep ReadingShow less