Earlier this year, the It's a Girl Thing team was planning all kinds of new fundraising events, for International Women's Day in March, for Mother's Day, and even an event to kick of the summer in June.
Then, lock down was announced.
We cancelled our International Women's Day event, and were faced with uncertainty regarding the upcoming months. Initially, we thought this would be over in a week or two, and our main focus was to finish the university semester. Things got worse, the lock down was extended; we were scared and lonely, wondering what was to come.
At the end of April, we came to the conclusion that It's a Girl Thing needed to continue empowering menstruating people. We started planning an online fundraiser! Well, it's more like a tampon drive. We decided that, for the month of May, we would ask for online donations through our GoFundMe page. We had a goal to raise $700 for 7 different charitable organizations. We thought, 'this is going to be difficult to raise that much money, our previous fundraisers show that we usually receive generous donations, but not that generous'.
But, we recognized the need in our community. This pandemic is leading toward severe financial hardship for all of us. Those who were already suffering before the pandemic are suffering even more now. Organizations like shelters and food banks are experiencing lower-than-normal donations. All we could do was try to raise at least some money.
We announced our "Quarantine Fundraiser" on May 1st.
On May 2nd, we had not only reached our goal, but doubled it! An absolute miracle. We were so overwhelmed with everybody's generosity. Since the fundraiser was doing so well, we decided to triple the goal.
As of today, we have surpassed our new goal of $2100, and will continue throughout the rest of the month.
So, how did It's a Girl Thing respond to this pandemic? We kept doing the same thing we always have, which is telling people about period poverty, and asking them to support - but, we did it way better, thanks to COVID-19.
Thank you so much to everyone who has donated already, these funds are going directly to the needs of people struggling with period poverty.
Everyone deserves a safe and healthy period!