Share the Dignity was born last year, after reading an article in Mamma Mia on a crisis concerning homeless women and women who are in refuge after fleeing domestic violence.
Many women are forced to choose between food for themselves and their children, or sanitary items when they have their period. Many women were having to create makeshift pads from newspaper, hand towels, clean themselves in public restrooms, and girls living in poverty are not going to school at that time of the month.
If this is the first time you've heard about this, you are probably having the same reaction I did. I was horrified. I couldn't know about this and try not to do something about it. No women should suffer indignity of this nature. I started with a small local collection and as news travelled and the collection gathered press, more and more support agencies were sending requests for pads and tampons. forward to today, 10 months later, and we are now a national organisation supporting hundreds of agencies.
We survive on the goodwill of compassionate volunteers and the caring women who support our twice yearly sanitary collection drives each April and August, or attend our various events through the year. Following us and sharing our posts on social media is a quick easy and free way to ensure more people are aware of this crisis and that we can do more. We've been so lucky with the outpouring of empathy and love from the public.
At Christmas we had the idea to do collections of "it's in the bag", whereby women were asked to donate a preloved hand bag and fill it with life's necessities and some of life's luxuries, in addition to sanitary items. We know that children's needs are often met at Christmas, but that many women do not receive gifts. We were overwhelmed by the volume of Donations and the notes included in the bags and feedback from the recipients’ make the work we do worthwhile. With over 26000 handbags donated we were hearing stories about women receiving these as Christmas gifts where they hadn’t had a present or gift for ten years, the simplest of things that we do make such a difference to women in need.
We are so thrilled that our collections in April and August will be really easy to make donations with our donation bins being able to be found at all Terry White Chemists, Fernwood Fitness, Australian Hearing Hub, Brazilian Beauty and participating Coles not to mention the offices and local businesses that care to help us Share the Dignity. We hope to have donated 500,000 packs of pads and tampons that will ensure NO woman should have to choose between buying food or sanitary items.
https://www.facebook.com/sharethedignity