Grace and Jillian from Troop 67481 completed their Silver Award by creating The Pink Project. The Silver Award project was to put menstruation products in all the LPS middle schools to provide all LPS middle school girls with the supplies they needed.
Grace and Jillian wanted to bring awareness to the needs of the community, provide supplies for menstruating teens/tweens in need as well as limit the stigma around menstruation.
There will always be more menstruating people in need, and the box will continue to help them. The posters will raise awareness for the issues menstruating people will face, and decrease the shame and stigma some people feel.
Grace and Jillian shared their thoughts on the process of earning their Silver Award:
Grace says, "My favorite part of the project was planning it and putting our plans into action. For example, writing the script for presenting in front of the LPS school board took about a week of writing and later fine tuning. When we actually presented it though, it felt so good and like our plan was being put into action and people were listening to two 8th graders about an issue in our community. When people responded to our emails and actually got excited about our project and supported us, I couldn't believe it! In the end, when I look back to where we started, we came a long way from just choosing an idea that we were passionate about to actually putting something into action in our community, more specifically our middle schools."
Jillian says, "I loved making the boxes, and putting the signs up around the schools. I learned that people will donate tons of products if given the opportunity, and that some schools in our district don’t provide menstrual products in the health centers/front office."
"Our project was also what we envisioned to be a starter example for all LPS middle schools, our hopes in the somewhat near future are that all LPS middle schools install period product dispensers in both the girls PE lockers rooms and restrooms."
Grace adds, "From Girls Scouts and this project specifically, I learned that some people are passionate about some of the same things that are you, you just have to be open to talking to them about it. People will also donate lots of products if given the opportunity and some issues in our communities are simply so small that just two 8th grade girls can make a difference."