Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Chemmalakuzhy and Claire Zhu.
Hi Ashley and Claire, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
Ashley: I have possessed an interest in social impact and strengthening my community for years. I have become interested in many social issues, such as accessibility to adequate healthcare, education, and housing. Especially with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for aid in these three particular areas has skyrocketed, making We R Love’s mission all the more essential. As the Executive Director of the We R Love Foundation, I plan and execute service projects to help people in these aspects of need. The decision to tackle period poverty in our city addressed our pillars of health and homelessness, perfectly aligning with our mission at We R Love.
Claire: As the founder and president of my school’s HOSA Future-Health Professionals chapter, I am passionate about the medical field and aspire to positively serve my community in the public health sector. I especially wanted to tackle the various health disparities within my community and through learning about period poverty and how it disproportionately affects women in financially difficult situations, I aspired to take action to combat it.
Both: For our second project, We R Love and HOSA partnered to combat period poverty in the city of Dallas. We started this project in January after identifying and researching this issue. We then contacted Mrs. Pamela Culbertson, Director of Volunteers at the Dallas LIFE Homeless Recovery Center, and set out on our mission to raise awareness regarding the issue and provide sanitary products, like pads and tampons, for the 55 women they serve. We planned and held two successful bake sales in April, finally raising $532. Later that month, we reached out to companies, individuals, and sanitary product manufacturers, receiving support from Poppy Flowers, The Dallas Garden School, and various individual donors. After these fundraising efforts, we ultimately raised $3,450 and provided six months’ worth of sanitary products to the 55 women served by Dallas LIFE. Our project concluded with a visit to Dallas LIFE to learn more about their holistic approach to giving a hand up to homeless individuals by providing childcare, supplies, medical care, and skill development for future employment. While our project started with us hoping to give a month’s worth of sanitary products, it evolved and grew more than we could have anticipated into a more long-term solution, with us providing support to these women for the duration of half a year. We are so amazingly proud of what We R Love and HOSA have accomplished in the community!
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
From the beginning, we spent a lot of time researching period poverty to familiarize ourselves with the issue. We soon realized how prevalent and prominent of a problem it is and struggled to figure out an effective way to combat period poverty in the city of Dallas. Another challenge we faced involved planning and hosting two bake sales. We put in a lot of time and effort to find dedicated volunteers, buy snacks and drinks, pick locations, and get people to come by our stand to support our cause. Our sales started slowly, but through creative solutions like playing music and approaching individuals and families around the park to share our mission, we ultimately hosted these two successful bake sales, raising $532 from bake sale funds. With other fundraising efforts and generous support, we finally collected $3,450 to put towards our project of providing menstrual products to the 55 women served by the Dallas LIFE Homeless Recovery Center.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Ashley: The We R Love foundation is a local nonprofit that focuses on strengthening the community. Our three main pillars are health, homelessness, and education, and we plan and complete service projects within these three areas. So far, we have done two service projects, one during December of 2021 and our most recent project addressing period poverty. In December 2021, we partnered with Vogel Alcove, a local homeless shelter, to provide their families with food during the holidays. Generally, Vogel Alcove provides food bags for their families every day, but since they closed for the holidays, these families would have missed a vital food source for a week. We R Love gathered support and volunteers to make 90 food bags filled with a week worth of food for each family at Vogel Alcove. In our more recent spring project, We R Love partnered with a club at The Hockaday School to combat period poverty in our city. We raised $3,450 for our cause and worked with the Dallas LIFE Homeless Recovery Center to provide six months’ worth of pads and tampons to the 55 women they serve. Overall, We R Love aims to look for people and groups in need within our three pillars by asking our community and fellow nonprofits what they most struggle with and how we can help. We feel the obligation and the desire to help people in need. We hope you will join us on our journey!
Claire: By starting a HOSA Future Health Professionals Chapter at my school, I aimed to provide opportunities for students to engage in various medical-related opportunities. In our HOSA chapter, our main goal of ours is to contribute back to our community through various social impact initiatives. Along with the period poverty fundraiser, our club has initiated many other community service projects relating to health, like hosting a BeTheMatch drive to add more people and diversify the stem cell registry and hosting free medical summer camps for students around the Dallas area to learn about different medical professions and other topics.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
As we researched the issue, we were shocked to learn about different statistics like how 1 in 10 girls ages 14-21 cannot afford sanitary products and that the lack of period products is the number one leading cause of absenteeism in the United States. We realized that period poverty affects much more than just the physical health of many women and mental health and access to education. Additionally, we found many causes behind the issue, such as the tampon tax, stigma, and financial burden that the Covid-19 crisis has only exacerbated. Knowing this, we aimed to raise awareness of the nuances of this issue along with providing menstrual products to homeless women by creating bookmarks with these statistics to pass out in our bake sales.
Pricing:
- $3,450 (total amount we raised during our project)
- $532 (amount we raised from our two successful bake sales)
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.werlovefoundation.org (We R Love)
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/werlovefoundation/ (We R Love) https://www.instagram.com/hdayhosa/ (HOSA)
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WeRLoveFoundation/ (We R Love)
