{"id":18916,"date":"2021-04-20T11:41:46","date_gmt":"2021-04-20T03:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/?p=18916"},"modified":"2021-05-27T11:16:58","modified_gmt":"2021-05-27T03:16:58","slug":"high-school-student-starts-ngo-to-fight-period-poverty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk\/index.php\/2021\/04\/high-school-student-starts-ngo-to-fight-period-poverty\/","title":{"rendered":"High School Student Starts NGO to Fight Period Poverty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A high school student devotes herself to helping girls suffering from period poverty in China.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Ella Lang in Chongqing<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When most high\nschool students are busy preparing for university entrance examinations in China, Peng\nWanqian struggles to strike a balance between her study and her NGO work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peng, a\n19-year-old high school student in Chengdu, founded a student organisation\nStand TogetHer in February 2020, to help girls suffering from period poverty in\nChina.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organisation\nlaunched a programme to donate menstrual pads to teenage girls in Zhaojue\nCounty in Sichuan Province in August 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By collaborating\nwith Shanghai Rende Foundation, an established charity foundation founded in\n2011, Stand TogetHer raised around RMB \u00a5124,000 (US $17,500) from more than\n2,800 donors online in 28 hours during August 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cRaising so much\nmoney in such a short period of time was far beyond my expectation. We only had\n500 followers on our public WeChat account, and we were just a small team of\neight members at that time,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI try my best to\nbalance my NGO work and study. But one cannot put too much on one plate.\nSometimes I have to make a sacrifice,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On October 11,\n2020, Peng and her teammates distributed menstrual pads, bought with the money\nraised, to about 700 schoolgirls in Zhaojue. The activity clashed with Peng\u2019s\nTOEFL examination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI nearly broke\ndown at that time. In the end, I skipped my exam and went to Zhaojue. My mom\naccompanied and comforted me the whole way,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI never regret the decision I made. It is impossible to strike a balance between my studies and my charity work. All I can do is force myself to learn more efficiently,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motivation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What motivated\nPeng to commit to charity work and even sacrifice her own studies was her first\nencounter with the concept of period poverty five years ago when she was only\n14.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She came across a\nYouTube video explaining how homeless females in America deal with\nmenstruation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Peng did not\nlink it to the situation in China at once. She began paying attention to\nwomen\u2019s menstrual issues two years ago, during her first year of high school.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne day I\nborrowed a pad from a classmate. She tucked it in her sleeve and passed it to\nme secretly,\u201d she recalls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThen I thought\nto myself, why do we act like this? Then I realized this is a sign of period\nshame,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peng says she\nused to be one of the girls who used black plastic bags to carry pads after\nbuying them and avoided saying \u2018menstrual pads\u2019 in public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The embryo of\nStand TogetHer was a research team studying toxic masculinity in December 2019.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Five high school\ngirls in the team, including Peng, created a public WeChat account called\n\u2018Stand TogetHer\u2019 to post their thoughts about gender issues in February 2020.\nThen they turned it into an organisation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The NGO\u2019s first\nproject was about donating menstrual pads to female medical workers fighting on\nthe frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic in Wuhan in March 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe scale of\ndonation was small. We raised about RMB \u00a510,000 (US $1,500) in three days.\nNobody in our team had any experience in doing this, and we encountered many\ndifficulties in operation,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe did not know\nhow to raise funds online. And it was hard for us to reach out to period\nproduct companies for sponsorships since we were just high school students,\u201d\nshe adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome members\nwanted to quit due to pressure, but everyone worked really hard. We sent\nmessages to customer service teams of period product companies on Taobao and\nused all available channels to raise funds. Finally, we were able to donate 240\nboxes of pads to the frontline workers,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Step<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peng then set her\nsights on Zhaojue County in Sichuan Province, one of the poorest areas in\nChina. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In June 2020, Peng, together with four other students from Stand TogetHer, visited Zhaojue to learn about the period poverty problem schoolgirls faced there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Peng Wanqian packing pads into bags with her teammates. (Photo courtesy of Stand TogetHer)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA teacher told\nus the children\u2019s weekly pocket money was between RMB \u00a52 (US $0.3) and RMB \u00a510\n(US $1.5). But the average price of a pad is about RMB \u00a51 per pad. Very few\ngirls could afford it, so many girls use tissues as a cheaper alternative,\u201d\nPeng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back to Chengdu,\nPeng did research to learn about period poverty online. She searched \u2018period\npoverty\u2019 on Baidu, the biggest search engine in China.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe search\nresults were all about period poverty in India, Scotland, and America. I did\nnot find anything about period poverty in China,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peng decided to\nraise money to help girls facing period poverty in Zhaojue and arouse public\nawareness about the issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe planned to\nraise RMB \u00a590,000 (US $14,000) in half a year, but surprisingly, we got around\nRMB \u00a5124,000 (US $17,500) in two days,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Her NGO used the money to offer free menstrual pads, enough for a whole year, to 700 teenage girls in a local primary school in Zhaojue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Teenage girls carrying bags full of pads. (Photo courtesy of Stand TogetHer)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the first time, I know that my ideas can be turned into reality with the help of strangers. It really touches me that many people are willing to donate money to an unknown organisation run by high school students,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the first time, I know that my ideas can be turned into reality with the help of strangers. It really touches me that many people are willing to donate money to an unknown organisation run by high school students.\u201d <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Future<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peng will go to\nAmerica to start her university life in September this year, but she says she\nwill continue to lead the project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI will still go\nto Zhaojue every year and monitor the progress of our project there. And Stand\nTogetHer will expand the scale of donation to help more teenage girls suffering\nfrom period poverty in Sichuan Province,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The organisation\nwill also organise training sessions about menstrual hygiene for schoolgirls in\nZhaojue. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are\ncollaborating with medical students at Sichuan University. They are\nprofessionally trained and some of them come from Liangshan Yi autonomous\nprefecture, where Zhaojue County belongs,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe identity of high school students is a double-edged sword. We may be questioned for lacking experience and sometimes being irresponsible. But at the same time, we can make use of our student identity to capture media attention, which will help arouse public awareness about period poverty,\u201d Peng says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edited by Charleen Chen<\/em>
Sub-edited by Agnes Lam<\/em>
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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