Meet Ashley
Ashley lives in a small community in Northern BC. She's heard about period poverty in Canada, but recently she's started realizing it's an issue in her own community too. Menstrual products are expensive, and in a small town, they aren't always easy to find. Some women and girls are going without the products they need.
Ashley thinks her church could collect menstrual products to give away, but she wonders if that would really be enough. Her church wants to help, but they're not sure what else they could do.
Through simple, practical action, the Church has another opportunity to demonstrate the love of Jesus in their community.
How We Work:
Ashley’s Story
Understand the Problem
Ashley sees women struggling to access period products. JIC helps her uncover the bigger picture: cost and availability, stigma, gaps in menstrual health knowledge, and lack of awareness of existing resources.
Build on What
Already Exists
We identify community strengths: an organization already distributing products, a local nurse, trusted women who want to help, existing community resources, and the church’s washrooms and meeting space.
Find the Right Approach
JIC combines menstrual health research with what Ashley has learned from local women to develop a response that addresses products, education, stigma, and access.
Equip Local
Partners To Lead
Ashley’s church helps expand access to free menstrual products, offers menstrual health education with a local nurse, and connects women and girls with existing community resources—with JIC providing the program design, tools, guidance, and evaluation.
The Result
A locally led menstrual health program that meets immediate needs while strengthening knowledge, resources, and support within the community.
Step One:
Understand the Problem
Ashley’s church could start collecting period products right away—but before they do, JIC helps Ashley find out what women and girls in the community are actually experiencing.
Are products too expensive, or are they difficult to find locally? Do embarrassment or stigma make it harder to ask for help? Are there gaps in menstrual health knowledge or access to reliable information?
Through conversations with women and girls, Ashley begins to see a bigger picture. Some struggle with the cost or availability of products, while others don’t know about resources that already exist. Women also identify gaps in menstrual health information and discomfort talking openly about periods.
A product drive might help—but now Ashley’s church understands why products alone may not be enough.
Step Two:
Build on What Already Exists
Ashley discovers that her church doesn’t have to address this need alone. There are already people, spaces, and services in the community that could become part of the response.
A local organization distributes some free menstrual products. A nurse at Ashley’s church has menstrual health knowledge. The church has private washrooms where products could be made available discreetly, and women in the congregation are willing to help. Other community services may also be able to reach women and girls the church cannot.
Instead of creating another separate service, Ashley begins connecting these pieces and identifying where her church could strengthen what is already happening.
The community already has resources—the opportunity is to connect and build on them.
Step Three:
Find the Right Approach
While Ashley gathers local knowledge, JIC researches what has been shown to support menstrual health and equity in Canada.
This helps narrow down what would actually be useful. Rather than focusing entirely on collecting products, the response can combine improved product access with education, connections to existing services, and efforts to make conversations about menstrual health easier.
Step Four:
Equip Local Partners to Lead
With a direction in place, JIC helps Ashley and her church turn the ideas into something they can realistically carry out.
Who will keep products stocked? Where should they be available? How can women access them without having to ask? What educational materials are needed? And how will Ashley know whether the program is actually useful to women?
JIC helps the church work through these practical decisions, develop resources, prepare the people involved, and create a simple way to evaluate and improve the program. Ashley and other local partners then lead it, while JIC remains available for guidance and troubleshooting.
So what might Ashley actually do?
Partner with local organizations to make free menstrual products available in more places
Work with the nurse from her church to offer relaxed menstrual health education sessions where women and girls can learn and ask questions
Create a simple local resource guide showing where women and girls can access free products, health services, and other support
How this Helps
Ashley and her church are being the hands and feet of Jesus by caring about an area of women’s health that can sometimes feel uncomfortable to talk about. They are honoring women as God created them—showing that their bodies, their health, and their everyday needs are worthy of care. Through simple, practical action, the Church has another opportunity to demonstrate the love of Jesus in their community.
They were able to connect with their community to understand the problem beyond the label of poverty, listen to the girls and women around them, strengthen their community resources, and build a local response. They don’t see the problem as something they will never have the resources to meet, but have practical steps they can take moving forward.
The response meets the immediate need by making free products more accessible, while also addressing longer-term barriers through menstrual health education, reduced stigma, stronger connections to existing resources, and greater community capacity to respond.