Agent of Change: Rochelle Courtenay
Five years ago, personal trainer Rochelle Courtenay got one of her clients involved in collecting pads and tampons for women who, due to homelessness and poverty, had no access to sanitary items. She has since founded the charity Share the Dignity, which distributes millions of period products across the country. The charity is running its Dignity Drive this month.
I never set out to do this sort of work. I feel like I’m the Steven Bradbury of charity – I stumbled and fell into this. Share the Dignity started six years ago when I read in an article about homelessness that 48,000 women didn’t have somewhere safe to call home, and didn’t have access to sanitary items. I couldn’t fathom that that could happen in Australia.
It really resonated with me – perhaps because of my experience with endometriosis. I knew what it was like to wear both a tampon and a pad and still leak everywhere. I just felt that if everybody knew about this, there is not a woman who wouldn’t want to help.
I was a personal trainer and I got my clients on board. I told everyone to bring me one packet of tampons for every bottle of wine they drank in a month. I started a Facebook page and in one month we collected 450 packets of pads and tampons, which we distributed to five different charities in the area.
Not long afterwards I got a call from one of the charities, asking, “Can we get some more?” This isn’t like donating a warm jacket or a pair of shoes that can be used for years. Sanitary items are the last things to get donated, and the first to go. So I put the word out again on Facebook.
We got amazing publicity when Em Rusciano, a Melbourne comedian, picked it up. It spiralled out of control, to be honest. I’d have training appointments back-to-back for three or four hours, and log on to Facebook to find 100 messages waiting for me. Anyone who offered to help, I’d give them a job. I’d ask them to do something in their skill set, or ask if they knew somebody who could help. No-one I asked said no.
When we did our second collection a few months later, we had 100 people volunteer to help. It was through our volunteers that we got our first big brands supporting us. Two of our volunteers worked at Fernwood Fitness and Terry White Chemists, and they got their employers to host collection boxes. We now have 5800 volunteers.
I knew nothing about setting up a charity – about having a board, about the certification we needed to operate in every state. I couldn’t have done it without my network. More than half of my first board were my clients, our first accountant was a client, another friend set up our website. Some of my husband’s old school mates got [law firm] DLA Piper on board, which gave us $30,000 in contra upfront and helped set us up with a constitution and attain tax-deductible status.
We now host two collections a year, in March and August. I keep it to two a year to avoid volunteer burnout. We have collection boxes in every Woolworths store around Australia, and most chemist chains. I tell businesses that this is one of the only charities you can make money from – people will come into the store and buy the products to put them in the collection box, and they will probably also buy something else while they are there.
We also provide Dignity Vending Machines that dispense free period packs to help women in need. We have them in homelessness hubs, in hospitals, in schools and in domestic violence services.
The major problem that we run into is that this is a topic no-one wants to talk about. We’ve spoken to breakfast TV about getting publicity, we’ve spoken to primetime TV, but they always say, “no-one likes to talk about periods.” This is ridiculous. If you don’t get periods yourself, you know someone who does. We need to stop thinking of this as a taboo topic.
We are about to start campaigning for menstrual and menopause leave. According to a recent report on menopause and the workplace, 26 per cent of women resign from jobs because of menopause, which is horrific. And it’s an issue around the world. We are working on a global period poverty summit next year. We want to get rid of the shame and stigma, we want everybody to be empowered around this issue, whether they are in New Zealand or Nigeria or Uganda.
To contribute to Share the Dignity’s August appeal, look for a donation box at your nearest Woolworths supermarket or chemist, or go to sharethedignity.com.au