The Kwek Society
Kwe'k means "women" in the Potawatomi language.
The Kwek Society provides period supplies -- moon time bags or period kits along with educational materials, pads, tampons, and underwear-- to Native American students and communities without ready access to these expensive menstrual necessities. They are guided by the needs of the communities they support, and they work to highlight the inequities -- including period poverty -- these communities experience.
Many Native students, particularly those living in rural areas, do not have access to a sufficient number of pads and tampons when they have their periods. As a result they may skip school altogether, suffer embarrassment or ridicule during the school day, or impact their health by using supplies for longer than intended or by making do with makeshift supplies like wadded up toilet paper. To protect their dignity and health, The Kwek Society supports and trumpets the successes of Native American students, girls and women and fulfill their other material needs.
Kwek Society Impact
2,227 moon time bags and puberty-focused books. Moon time bags are stuffed with pads, liners that are placed in bags sewn by supporters, in addition to puberty-education books for both sexes to school libraries.
109,673 period pads, tampons, liners and under-garments.
Nonprofit partners with nearly 40 schools and organizations (many rural) that distribute materials provided by The Kwek Society. The growing list of partners are nationwide, including spots in Maine, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Wyoming and Ontario, Canada.
Founder & President Eva Marie Carney (Potawatomi Nation) started The Kwek Society from her home in Arlington, VA. in 2018, to get menstrual hygiene supplies to Native students who otherwise might miss days of school each month when they were on their periods. The group initially focused on rural reservation schools, recognizing the long distances to stores to buy supplies, the lack of reliable transportation for many families, the socioeconomics of many families and the limited finances of these schools.
Visit The Kwek Society to learn more and jump in to support: https://kweksociety.org
The Kewk Society also provides these supplies to Native communities beyond the schools. For example, with schools closing due to COVID-19 The Kwek Society has switched gears and is providing products to schools and organizations that are making food distributions. Pads and tampons are now offered to students and their families, along with bags of food and jugs of water.
A partner of the Kwek Society is Days for Girls International which was established in November 2008 when CEO and Founder Celeste Mergens was working with an orphanage in Kenya. Her question of what do the girls do for feminine hygiene was answered with: “nothing, they sit in their rooms”. DfG’s mission is to end period poverty by supplying reusable kits.
In April, the Stanwood-Camano Island Chapter of DFG, located in Stanwood, WA, was called on to send kits and masks to the Navajo Nation in April of 2020. As we all know, Periods Don’t Stop for Pandemics.
The first boxes of donations contained 765 masks and 65 of our kits packed in transport bags. Working with Theresa H. Delmar and the Western Navajo Seamstresses COVID 19 Dooda, the Chapter sent 200 more kits in to help the women and girls of the Navajo Nation. In the next few weeks, another DfG chapter sent several pallets of disposable menstrual products.
