The Pad Project

One of the Top 20 Most Influential Projects of 2024

The Pad Project

One of the Top 20 Most Influential Projects of 2024

For providing access to menstrual products so girls’ educations aren’t interrupted

Region: Global   Sector: Public Health  UN SDGs: 5, Gender Equity; 9, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure

The term “period poverty” didn’t exist when Melissa Berton, a high school English teacher from Los Angeles, California, took a group of her students across the country to attend the 57th session of the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women in New York in 2013. Learning that girls around the world had breaks in their education because of menstruation was shocking to Berton and her students. Whether due to cultural differences or a lack of access to tampons or sanitary pads, up to 40 percent of girls globally miss one or more days of school when they are menstruating. In Ethiopia, that number is even higher, with 50 percent of girls missing between one and four days of class each month. The absences create academic gaps, the effects of which can last a lifetime.

Berton and her students wanted to do something about it. First, they created a documentary, “Period. End of Sentence,” which won a 2019 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short and sparked conversation from the U.S. to India, where the documentary was filmed, about the impact of menstruation and access to period products on girls’ education. But they wanted to go further. Berton, who still teaches English, went on to found The Pad Project in collaboration with her students. The students held bake sales and crowdfunded using the online platform Kickstarter in order to supply schools in India with pad-dispensing machines. The momentum and funding grew, and Berton decided to file for nonprofit status. Today, The Pad Project is a global charity that works to ensure access to menstrual products for girls around the world, often by hiring women in local communities to make and sell those items.

After several years spent working in countries far from the United States, Berton and colleagues at The Pad Project realized that they needed to include places closer to home in their project portfolio. Period poverty and its impact on girls’ education was also a problem in the U.S., and it was gaining media attention, as well as legislative attention. By early 2024, more than half the states had passed laws mandating the provision of period products in schools, though Berton signals there’s often a lag between a law being passed and products being available in schools. This is where The Pad Project can step in, filling the gap between a law’s passage and its implementation by making sure menstrual products are available.

Testimonial Image The Pad Project Partnership Program

A period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education.

The Pad Project motto

A period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education.

The Pad Project motto
Testimonial Image The Pad Project Partnership Program

“NYC put pads and tampons in public schools and did a study almost immediately after; attendance had already risen 2.5 percent,” Berton notes. Studies conducted internationally have reported similarly positive outcomes on attendance when menstrual products are made available in schools. She adds that research abounds to substantiate that providing period products has a dramatic, quantifiable impact on a girl’s attendance and academic outcomes. “We know how to do this,” Berton says about getting period products in girls’ hands.

The realization that period poverty was a problem at home led The Pad Project to launch a new project in Berton’s own backyard – Los Angeles – in 2024. The Pad Project is launching LAccess to Pads, Los Angeles County’s own menstrual health hub. The project will allow The Pad Project to triple the number of menstrual products it distributes annually, from 50,000 to 150,000.

The Pad Project’s model adapts to local contexts and needs in each area where it works, but it is always stakeholder-centered and led. Organizational project managers, including a newly hired operations manager, follow the lead of the people being served by the project, and this is the case whether in India or in Los Angeles. “We are very careful about understanding that we need to be sensitive to what is going to be useful to a community, and letting community leaders take the lead in terms of what’s appropriate,” Berton says.

Beyond distributing period products, Berton’s personal goal is for this new project to do what her documentary and her work with The Pad Project have done best: open space for candid conversations about girls’ experiences with their periods. “We have the most hope of creating structural change [by] letting local communities lead the initiative,” Berton says. “What does your community need? How can we support you to get it?

“One hope for the LA2050 grant is that if this discussion around menstruation and availability of products becomes more centralized and normalized, more money and resources will be available to conduct the kinds of studies that will lead people to say, ‘Yes, this does matter.’”