About Us
The Period Poverty Project is a community service organization based in San Diego, CA that advocates for menstrual equity and more freely available access to period products. It was created by Yasi Henderson and Andrea Rix as sophomores at The Bishop's School in La Jolla.
Our Story
During her leadership in global health course at Brown University in the summer of 2019, Yasi made an action plan to create a service organization centered around period poverty and stigma. Her main inspiration was Nadya Okamoto’s book, Period Power, which is about the necessary actions for solving period poverty and how we can all work to debunk the stigma around periods in our daily lives. Yasi shared the book with Andrea, who was immediately stirred by the fact that she had never even heard of this problem which affects the health, education, and wellbeing of women all around the world. Motivated by their newfound awareness of this often neglected issue, they created the Period Poverty Project in the fall of 2019.
Two years later, PPP has expanded its reach to 8 different student-led branches across San Diego. We hold bi-monthly workshops with a group of over 70 passionate voices of all genders, hoping to educate our community about menstrual health and discuss the injustice and stigma surrounding periods. Through school-based and city-wide menstrual product drives, our organization has collected and donated over 350,000 pads and tampons to homeless menstruators, survivors of domestic violence, at-risk youth, low-income students, and Central American migrants in vulnerable living conditions. We are so excited about our future plans and hope that this is only the beginning of our role in the menstrual movement!
Meet our
Co-Presidents
We are devoted to providing opportunities for you to support our cause. If you have any questions about how to get involved, please contact either one of us or our organization's email found on the Contact page!
Andrea Rix
Co-President
Andrea Rix (she/her), 19, is a sophomore studying biochemistry at Yale University. This year, she is most looking forward to connecting with some of the women at local homeless shelters and hearing their stories. Through this experience, she hopes to learn more about how menstrual injustice looks in her own community and amplify the voices of women in need.
Email: andrea.rix@yale.edu
Yasi Henderson
Co-President
Yasi Henderson (she/her), 20, is studying biopsychology at UC Santa Barbara. Her favorite part of the organization is the community's efforts to debunk the stigma by making periods the normal, comfortable topic of discussion that they should be. She believes that this is an essential first step in addressing period poverty as a whole.
Email: yasminhenderson@ucsb.edu