Tell Their Stories

Addressing Period Poverty Through Global Solidarity and Empowering Youth Worldwide to Take Action

My website primarily focuses on the issue of period poverty around the world. Period poverty, simply put, occurs when menstruators do not have access to period products due to their economic and geographic circumstances. In developed nations such as the United States, this can result in women needing to choose between affording period products and buying food for their families. Additionally, these products are rarely covered by government assistance programs like food stamps. In developing countries, the impacts are even more severe. Many women and girls are prevented from working outside the home or attending school due to period poverty. In certain cultures, they are even prevented from leaving their homes whatsoever or interacting with anyone. However, my initiative has a broader purpose as well. Many young individuals from around the world are passionate about a myriad of social issues. However, they lack the motivation and mentorship to take action on these issues. My project additionally seeks to empower young people around the world to start their own projects by educating them on how to use technology and social media to do this. This is necessary because many young individuals lack guidance on how to use technology for their projects. Tell Their Stories seeks to create a work of young changemakers who are empowered by technology.

TSS is a website that I coded to educate users on the issue of period poverty around the world and provide them with ideas for how to take on action on the social issues that are important to them. My target audience for this is anyone who is interested in learning about period poverty around the world, but I am specifically hoping to reach out to students of all ages through my page with resources on how to start their own initiatives. The primary page is the database page, containing an interactive world map. A user must simply click on a pinned country, and they will be navigated to that country’s specific page. This page contains a carefully researched summary of the issue of period poverty in that country and how it impacts the menstruators there. The other significant page is the take action page. It contains a comprehensive list of project ideas that users can implement to address the social issues that they are passionate about. These projects have a special emphasis on using technology and social media, with educational information for how to do so. This page also contains ranging resource requirements and contains a significant amount of options that are focused on school communities, since the target audience of the website is students. The final page is the mission page. This page contains background information on why and how TSS was created. Additionally, it contains comprehensive background information on the issue of period poverty as a whole, since many users may not know anything about period poverty. This initiative has two purposes. One: Educate users about the issue that I am personally passionate about, period poverty, which serves as a project example. Two: Empower young individuals to start their own tech and social media based initiatives.

I truly believe that multiple communities will benefit from my initiative. The countries that I spotlight will benefit because more people will be aware of how period poverty affects their nation and I provide organizations to support in these countries that are working to address period poverty. Additionally, the local communities of the users of my site will benefit because my take action page makes it more accessible for users to start period poverty in their communities. But most importantly, the young individuals who become empowered to start their own initiatives will benefit most prominently from my project. Many of these individuals lack education in technology and social media. Additionally, many of them do not have mentors to guide them through starting their own projects. My solution will provide them with an encompassing guide in replacement for the resources that they lack. I truly wish that I had resources like this when I got started so I am committed to ensuring that others do. Starting projects like these can greatly enrich the education of these individuals and open up doors to college and career possibilities. 

On a technical level, I am confident that I can continue to update and expand the site as needed. I am extremely knowledgeable in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for web development and continue to take more courses to expand my knowledge in this field. Additionally, I have a team of mentors consisting of older students and my computer science teachers who are able to help with technical issues and provide more specialized feedback. I believe that my experience as a young, local changemaker makes me very suited to continue working on this initiative. I started my Girl Up club at school with no experience in social projects and very few resources and mentors. Within a year, I was able to host a successful period product drive for refugees in my community and received full funding for period product dispensers in my school restrooms. I know the feeling of being a young changemaker who wants to start and project but doesn’t know where to start. I know the kind of support and information that I needed back then. I believe that this lived experience fully equips me to support the young changemakers who visit my site on their journey to start their own projects.

My main method to understanding the needs of young changemakers is to have conversations with students in my school and local community. I attend a mixed income school, in which students have ranging resources. Having conversations with a variety of students in my school has helped me to understand what young people need and what barriers they face from pursuing their own passion projects. Additionally, I have developed a growing social media presence for TSS. On Instagram, I have made an effort to reach out to other changemakers and interested students about what their perspectives are on the barriers and necessities of changemaking. 

I think the primary reason that my solution is innovative is that it approaches social enterprise from the perspective of beginners. I can admit there are many resources that exist regarding social entrepreneurship. However, there are few that actually teach interested individuals on how to get started. Often the so-called beginner resources assume that you have extensive resources available or that you can code in Python fluently etc. My site approaches social entrepreneurship in a manner that a 12 year old girl with no financial resources or prior skills could start a county science fair or propose an amendment to a local environmental bill. Tell Their Stories is for beginners starting from ground zero when most resources are not. Another reason that TSS is innovative is that we focus on technological skills for social enterprise. Most resources on social projects do not focus heavily on the applications of technology, even though technology is our most powerful tool in this day and age. Similarly, most resources on beginner tech skills do not focus on the applications for social projects. By combining these two components, we create a unique and intersectional learning experience for users. Finally, we use a self designed, technological project as both the host of the initiative and an example for what users can accomplish by utilizing our resources.

My primary impact goal is to begin a method of collecting the testimonies of the individuals that were inspired by TSS and used our resources. My plan is to include question boxes on both the site itself and on social media for users to include what inspired them about TSS and what actions they took after utilizing our resources. Once I get some responses from this, I can use the data to set more specific outreach goals. Additionally, I plan to continue to grow TSS’ social media presence by continuously connecting with like minded projects and changemakers to further project TSS’ mission with potential users.

The core technology that powers my solution is quite simple. Fundamental web development. HTML. CSS. JavaScript. Some may call this basic. However, so much can be done with intermediate knowledge in these three languages. They make it possible for me to include the content I want to include, design it the way I want, and make the site interactive, with a positive user experience. So simple yet so effective. While some may note that I could utilize more advanced techniques, I believe that there is a value to keeping things simple. As TSS evolves and expands, I plan to update it with more advanced code, as I continue to learn more advanced code from extracurricular courses. But for now, these core web development languages are able to convey the key ideas that TSS stands for perfectly. And at the end of the day, that's what counts.

With a solution like a website, it is difficult to know the exact number of individuals that utilize the resources available via TSS. Through TSS’ Instagram followers, my Girl Up Club, individuals who I’ve had exchanges with, etc. I estimate that TSS has had around 300 users. Approximately 20 users have reached out to me with feedback or with a positive experience relating to the site. For the next year, I hope to see the number of users reach the 1000+ mark. More importantly, I hope to gather more data on users that have been motivated to start initiatives because of our resources. I would like to reach 100 individuals who started projects because of TSS within a year.

I think one of the primary barriers that TSS faces is having a small social media platform. TSS only has an impact if we continue to have users but many users may not know about us since our platform is so small. I have been addressing this barrier by reaching out directly to changemakers and organizations with larger platforms to see if they would be interested in a collaboration or in promoting TSS on their platform. So far, I have a few of such collaborations coming out in Spring 2023. Another barrier is that TSS does not presently have a revenue source. This is because our target audience cannot afford to make donations to our site and they would not be able to access our resources unless they are free. This prevents TSS from making certain technological developments or hiring specialist help. I am planning to combat this by continuing to apply for grants and investigating the possibility of TSS becoming a non profit organization for fundraising purposes. 

My project is affiliated with the Girl Up Campaign. I am the founder of my high school's Girl Up Chapter. I have piloted my site to my club and have received a number of beta testers through this partnership.

Up until January 2023, TSS has operated without revenue or expenses. The site has been constructed and maintained using free resources, including Replit, Unsplash, etc. All the work to construct TSS has been done by volunteers. TSS operates like this because our target audience likely cannot pay to access our resources so they would not truly serve our target community unless they are free. TSS is moving towards expanding our volunteer team, so that the work can be distributed over more individuals and we can continue to provide our resources for free to our target audience. 

As of January 2023, TSS is hoping to include some updates that would require funding. We would like to move away from using Replit as a parent site and instead, purchase a domain for TSS. Additionally, we are looking to begin developing a mobile application of TSS beginning in Spring 2023. In order to do so, technology with mobile app development capabilities must be purchased. Over the last few months, I have been applying to number of grants to see if we can receive funding to make these improvements. However, small grants such as these are a short term solution. As a long term solution, I am looking to see if I can create a non profit for TSS for a number of reasons, one of which is to fundraise in order to continue to expand the site and its resources.