People are being encouraged to donate sanitary items, including tampons, pads and incontinence pads, throughout the month of August to help women and girls in need.
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Placing one of these items into your trolley during your weekly shop, and then into one of the many collection boxes around Milton-Ulladulla can go a long way to changing a life, the region’s Share the Dignity coordinator Kallista Buchanan said.
Collections are at; Sol Sisters Artisan Collective, Milton Ulladulla Times, Capital Chemist, Sunflower House, Priceline, Livewire Theatre Studio, The Mollymook Pharmacy and Newsagent, Milton Terry White Pharmacy, The Fig Tree Forest, The Skin Rejuvenation Suite, Fit Mummy Village, and Face and Body Therapies Ulladulla.
Share the Dignity was founded in 2015 by Rochelle Courtenay after she discovered that thousands of Australian women cannot access sanitary products when they need them.
“Can you imagine having your period and not being able to afford tampons or pads? And not just once, but each and every month, sometimes for years,” she said.
“For over 85,000 Australian women and girls this is their reality. Homeless women, women in domestic violence shelters, women and girls in dire poverty, simply can’t afford sanitary products, so they improvise – they use paper towels, newspapers, socks even dried leaves to create makeshift sanitary pads.
Ms Courtenay said access to sanitary items was a human right, not an optional luxury.
She held her first sanitary drive in March 2015 in her neighbourhood in Brisbane. Since then Share the Dignity has grown into a national charity which has collected over 650,000 packets of pads and tampons, from collection points in businesses, schools and other locations all over Australia.
Every item collected is registered, sorted and sent to services that directly support women and girls in need. From a handful of volunteers, there are now over 1000 volunteers throughout Australia working to help women in need, collecting from over 2,000 collection points across the country.
”We know that in Australia there are thousands of women and girls who don’t have access to pads, tampons, menstrual cups or period-proof underwear,” Ms Courtenay said.
Find more information at www.sharethedignity.com.au.