Seneca College is the first post-secondary school in Canada to give their menstruating students and staff access to free pads and tampons.
Within the first week most of the dispensers were in need of a refill.
The college is working with a non-profit organization called the Red Dot Project which was started by Seneca Professor Phillip Jang and some of his students. Jang is the co-creator of Red Dot Project and he says he started the project after one of his students, who had an internship at a youth homeless shelter, told him how difficult it was for the women there to access the feminine products that they wanted every month.
Red Dot project was started in 2017, and after a few years of working to give homeless women a chance to have a better period, processor Jang noticed what he calls “period poverty” in school too.
Jang says he wanted to address this issue, so he spoke with Seneca College President David Agnew and pitched a new idea. That idea became a trial run at Seneca’s Peterborough Campus, and now it’s an initiative across all of the college’s campuses.
Members of Red Dot are continuing to raise awareness of “period poverty” at other post-secondary institutions including Ryerson University.
Jang says he hopes more post-secondary schools will follow Seneca’s lead and until then he and his team will continue to hand out famine products to homeless women around Toronto Once a month.
By: Frankie Fiorini
This article was originally written by Frankie Fiorini for Seneca College
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