Women-powered resource group makes service its first in-person assignment
“This has been a dream for four years of, ‘How we can do something on site? How CAN WE do a volunteer event?’ "Obviously, we had COVID that was in the way,” said Maia Savitt, a Human Resources senior specialist with Allina Health, who has been on AWE’s leadership team since its inception.
After four years as a group, the members of AWE accomplished their goal of creating their inaugural, in-person volunteering event.
Packing period kits
With music playing in the background and boxes upon boxes of tampons, pads and wipes piled high, more than 50 people gathered in Pettingill Hallin the Allina Commons to pack period kits in late October.
“Each kit is a month’s worth of period products. It’s tampons, pads and then wipes,” explained Liz Jacob, one of the founding members of Period Kits Minnesota, a nonprofit formed by a group of friends looking to do good in the early days of lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Recent studies revealed one in three teens cannot get tampons or pads during their periods, and with period products costing an average of $20 a month, there are some people who must choose between tampons and food.
“We have a lot of patients who struggle with difficult menstrual cycles. Some people deal with irregular cycles, they may not know when their cycle is going to come or they may have a really heavy period that requires a lot of period products,” said AWE member Jade Gjerde, a diagnostic medical sonographer, also known as an ultrasound tech, at Allina Health’s East Lake Street Clinic. “Even if this makes the financial burden of just one person’s period easier, it's a huge difference and that should be the goal for every menstruating person.”
Raising awareness and improving access
Period poverty, or lack of access to period products, made headlines in Minnesota when a 2023 education law mandated schools provide free period supplies for students in grades 4 through 12. However, there are some caveats.
“It’s been very educational,” said Savitt. “The law didn’t include schools on reservations or private schools or schools that chose to opt out of the mandate.”
Each Allina Health ERG gets $1500 to donate to a nonprofit of its choice. AWE used that money and more to purchase the products for the kits. Period Kits MN provided the bags, stickers and boxes. This is the nonprofit’s second largest event of the year, and the kits packed by AWE and its volunteers will go to Face2Face an organization in St. Paul that provides mental and health services to youth and Bags of Hope – MN, which fills bags with necessities for sex trafficking victims.
“It’s humbling to think that there are teens out there who need this. There are moms who need this. There are dads with teens who can’t afford these products and need them for their children,” added Jacob. “It’s humbling to think we’re helping this group of people that maybe we wouldn’t have known about or touched before.”
The connection
When AWE’s leadership team searched “period kits” online they were thrilled to learn there was an organization right in their backyard. The cherry on top? Learning Allina Health employee Amanda Thilquist is also a founding member of Period Kits MN.
“It’s amazing and sort of surreal. When we started, I didn’t think we were going to have people coming to us,” said Thilquist, an oncology nurse navigator at Abbott Northwestern Hospital. “The fact that Allina Women Empowered reached out to us. I just think it’s amazing.”
Thilquist admits she did not know much about AWE before preparation for this event began. Now she and AWE hope more people learn about AWE and its mission to give women employees a more powerful voice, while helping members of the communities Allina Health serves with volunteering events like this one.
“It’s great to bring awareness to this issue and to bring folks together. We get to have fun, do a teambuilding exercise and get to know fellow Allina health employees,” shared Asha Elgonda, an AWE member and infection preventionist at Abbott Northwestern. “I think it’s a win-win.”
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