To honor the end of Women’s History Month in March, a class of Cor Jesu Academy (CJA) students put together a new initiative: Tampons for Treats. Throughout the week, students from the all-girls school donated women’s hygiene products, and at the end of the week, donors received a cupcake in return.
In total, CJA collected approximately 1,500 women’s hygiene products. They will be donated to Room at the Inn, a homeless shelter in Bridgeton, which accommodates a large population of women and families.
“It was really about educating our student population about how many women go without, so it was really powerful,” CJA teacher Audrey Ploesser said. “We got a lot of good feedback from teachers and students about it. A lot of people were saying, ‘I had no idea.’”
She added, “(Our students) often don’t have to think about not having access to those things, so I think it provided a good perspective of something they may not be aware of.”
The Tampons for Treats initiative was put on by Ploesser and her Modern Women’s History class. This is the second year of the class’s existence. The semester-long course focuses on women’s history and achievements from 1990 to the present day in areas like sports, entertainment and religious life. Women of color and local women from St. Louis are also touched upon.
Last year, Ploesser’s class put on a diaper drive for a local family shelter. This year, her students were drawn to the idea of “period poverty” — when women do not have access to necessary hygiene products or the facilities required to use them.
“I let the students take hold of what we’re doing in the class,” Ploesser said. “This year, the topic was periods. I would suspect that every year would be a slightly different drive based off of what the students were invested in.”
The class created informational posters to educate the CJA student body on period poverty. They were also responsible for all the planning of the event — ordering cupcakes and collecting and bagging donations to be delivered to Room at the Inn.
Ploesser said this initiative was particularly powerful for her because her class is a “diverse group of young women,” from their families to socioeconomic status to political views.
“For them to come together on a topic and feel really empowered by it as a whole class was really neat to see,” Ploesser said. “I thought it was really special.”
She added, “Part of the initiative was to break down the stigma around girls being able to not talk about it, and whisper it. Trying to make it a little more, ‘Nope, this is just part of the female body. We don’t have to be shameful about it.’ All the discussions around it were really awesome and powerful, but to see the girls take hold of it was so neat. It ended up being really successful, and the school had good vibes around it. It was just an awesome way to top off our Women’s History Month.”