Nearly three years into the program, Eastern Michigan University’s Changing the Cycle is continuing its commitment to bring free menstrual products to students, with more ways to get products than ever before.
EMU’s Changing the Cycle program is an initiative that seeks to end period poverty by providing access to free, organic menstrual products around campus. It began in the fall of 2021 with three social work students creating the program as part of a community service assignment. Now, their program manager Jesse John said they’re looking forward to continuing their work throughout the school year.
“The ultimate goal is just making sure that difficulties that come with menstruation are not hindering people's daily lives, especially not their academic life,” John said.
Changing the Cycle now has 80 different product supply stations throughout campus, with 30 wall dispensers and 50 baskets with products inside bathrooms. Each distribution system has products supplied by Aunt Flow, a menstrual advocacy company that specializes in providing 100% cotton pads and tampons, and wall dispensers to schools and businesses. With these products, Changing the Cycle goes through roughly 600 products a month.
According to Johns, every building on campus, academic and residential, has at least one supply station. Some of the more busy buildings on campus like Pray-Harrold, Mark Jefferson and the Student Center have multiple. And they’re still growing; four more dispensers were installed just last month.
All of these menstrual product stations are stocked by volunteers, like Chica Peters. She got involved with the program a year ago after seeing the products around campus and using them herself.
“I'm just one of the people that saw [that] I really benefit from a program here and I'd love to help make it as beneficial as it can be to everybody. And now I'm making sure that products are maintained on campus. I not only help myself, but I help the entire campus by making sure we all have what we need. That's awesome,” Peters said.
Changing the Cycle is fully reliant on student volunteers like Peters. When they first started, they would have one student volunteer monitoring two to three buildings at a time, making sure that their dispensers are stocked. Now, they have at least one student assigned to each building on campus.
“We’ve had a volunteer responsible for every building. We’ve had enough people interested and willing to give their time and energy to keep it restocked and keep that maintenance up,” John said.
The future of Changing the Cycle involves getting the university more involved. Johns has spoken to members of the university about absorbing some of the funding responsibilities into the university’s budget. This way, Changing the Cycle would have less problems securing funding.
“You see a lot of big name schools doing this and it's just a really nice resource to have out,” John said.
