At one time, it wasn’t unusual for the dining room in the Joy family’s South Orange home to be packed floor to ceiling with boxes of sanitary pads and tampons. The collection was the start of a campaign that mom Elise and daughters Emma and Quinn launched to address an all-too-common problem: girls and women missing school or work because they can’t afford menstrual products.
Known as period poverty, it’s an issue the trio tackle with their nonprofit, Girls Helping Girls. Period. What began in 2015 with neighborhood donation parties, with names like Party at Our Pad and Bloody Mary Brunch, has exploded into a statewide fundraising, legislative and educational effort to eliminate period poverty and stigma. Thanks to their advocacy, starting in the 2024-2025 school year, New Jersey schools have free menstrual products in bathrooms as a result of a new law.
“These legislators recognize that it is the school’s responsibility, just like it is to provide toilet paper, to provide basic necessities so students can get back to class,” says Elise Joy, executive director of Girls Helping Girls. Period. “It’s a sign of respect.”
It all started when Emma Joy, then 13, held a food drive and learned that no federal agency covers menstrual products for people who can’t afford them.
“We talk a lot about food insecurity, mothers not having diapers, but this idea of not having menstrual products wasn’t being talked about,” says Emma, 24, an environmental educator and secretary on the nonprofit’s board. “We knew we had to help.”
Nationally, nearly one-quarter of students struggle to access menstrual products, and more than 80 percent have missed class because they didn’t have the period products they needed, according to a 2021 national survey.
Since forming the nonprofit in 2016, through individual donors and partnerships with companies like Stayfree, Carefree, Honey Pot and Playtex, the group has donated 4.5 million period products to more than 100 organizations. They donate to YMCAs, Boys & Girls Clubs, homeless shelters, food pantries and more. The organization, which now houses donations in a storage facility, served 10,000 individuals in the past year.
Since 2019, the Joys helped lobby for the new law, which requires public schools with 6th through 12th-grade students to provide free menstrual products in 50 percent of bathrooms, including gender-neutral bathrooms. The state has budgeted $3.5 million to cover the cost. School officials purchase the products and apply for reimbursement.
Another aspect of period poverty is not knowing how to manage a period, so education is critical, Emma says. Some parents feel uncomfortable discussing menstruation, and some girls are taught to handle their periods privately, leaving many feeling embarrassed and scared.
Quinn Joy, 21, remembers feeling the stigma in her middle school health class.
“I was in a class of boys and girls, so when the conversation was about how menstruation was going to be awful, it shed a negative light to everyone,” says the college senior, who serves on the group’s board.
To normalize periods, Girls Helping Girls. Period. offers workshops statewide for fifth graders. Called IYKYK (If You Know, You Know), Elise and her team cover all the particulars of menstruation. Everybody leaves with a period emergency kit of pads, hand sanitizer, spare underwear and other necessities.
“Openness about our periods will help erase the stigma,” Emma says.
“When you teach children at a younger age…they can advocate for themselves and break the cycle of period stigma.”
[RELATED: NJ Nonprofit Has Donated Millions of Diapers to Local Families in Need]
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