North Hollywood Students Raise Awareness about Period Equity, Win Academy Award
by Hannah Kelley, District Representative, Office of Senator Hertzberg
Mason Maxam, a junior at Oakwood Secondary School in North Hollywood, sits across from me at a popular local coffee shop on a sunny Saturday afternoon. As a District Representative for Senator Hertzberg, I meet a lot of people in the San Fernando Valley to get feedback about the community, and often I get the opportunity to meet really extraordinary individuals like Mason.
Since she was in the seventh grade at Oakwood, she has been a part of a group of students, teachers, and mothers working towards a common goal: de-stigmatizing menstruation. After attending a United Nations conference with their English teacher, Melissa Berton, a group of Oakwood students learned that women around the world are unable to access basic feminine hygiene products, and many are forced to drop out of school. Mason said that one of the reasons behind this was stigma; women are afraid to talk about their periods, even if they need to.
Now known as The Pad Project, the group started fundraising through crowdfunding, bake sales, and yoga classes to raise money for a machine that makes biodegradable sanitary pads. Through their fundraising efforts, The Pad Project has donated machines to small villages in India and one in Afghanistan. These machines create accessible and affordable pads for women in these cities to purchase. Each of the machines are operated exclusively by teams of women, who enjoy gainful employment by manufacturing the pads, then selling them to women in their communities.
Around the time they began fundraising for their first machine, the students from Oakwood furthered their ambitions and decided to also raise money to produce a documentary to spread awareness about the issue. Period, End of Sentence peers into the lives of women from a Kathikhera, a village on the outskirts of New Delhi, India who make their livings through the machine that The Pad Project donated. The filmmakers, several of whom are founding members of The Pad Project, opened up a dialogue about menstruation in Kathikhera, discovering that many women in the city didn’t know what their period was or why it was happening.
On Sunday, February 24th, Period, End of Sentence took home an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. In her acceptance speech, the film’s director, 25 year-old Rayka Zehtabchi, said “I’m not crying because I’m on my period or anything. I can’t believe a film about menstruation just won an Oscar!” The success of their documentary only highlights why The Pad Project’s mission is so captivating. While their activism started right in the heart of North Hollywood (Senate District 18), The Pad Project aims to continue to expand their work globally and encourage women to be comfortable with their bodies.
In the United States, there are still 36 states that create a financial barrier to obtaining feminine hygiene products by imposing regressive sales taxes on such products, including California. In 2016, Senator Hertzberg co-authored AB 1561, a bill that would have eliminated this tax in California.
Learn how to get involved with The Pad Project at https://www.thepadproject.org/ or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/ThePadProjecct/
In recognition of their immense contributions to our community and beyond, Senator Hertzberg will be honoring Oakwood students involved in The Pad Project in a ceremony on the Senate Floor in Sacramento on March 11.
