Keeping Girls in School
The Green Valley Branch of AAUW was awarded a Community Action Grant from
AAUW-AZ, July 2023. That is when the project “Keeping Girls in School” was born! The
goal of the project was help girls in need not to miss school due to lack of feminine
products.
We focused first on providing supplies for Continental School which enrolls a high
proportion of minority and impoverished students. This school serves students from K-8
and has a Title 1 status. Statistics show that 1 in 5 girls in low-income schools miss
class because of lack of feminine products.
The Continental School nurse has been filled with gratitude and has expressed her
appreciation numerous times. In the past, the nurse has gone shopping on her own time
and purchased supplies from her own pocket. The young girls have been thrilled with
the cotton bags made by the branch’s interest group, Needles and More. The nurse fills
the bags with much needed supplies.
The branch has expanded its outreach and awareness to include three additional
locations that have expressed need for feminine products. Locations identified include
Amado Youth Center, Sahuarita Food Bank and Resource Center, and the Tohono
O’odham Nation Reservation. This was made possible by the generous in-kind
donations made from our branch members.
Together we are Keeping Girls in School!
St. Andrew’s Clinic
AAUW Green Valley members make sack lunches for the non-profit St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic. The clinic offers free specialized medical care for children with disabilities living in Mexico who cannot get or afford the care they need in their home country.
Many of these children (from ages 1 month to 18 years) and their families have long bus rides to get to the border for their treatment and therapies at the clinic in Nogales, Arizona. We organize teams of 6 AAUW members to make 80 sack lunches a month so the children will have food for their return trip home.
Each sack contains a box of juice, a granola bar, and a sandwich. Washed apples and bottled water are provided separately.
Sahuarita Food Bank
Since 2017, we have been collecting personal care items for the Sahuarita Food Bank as a community outreach project. In 2018-19 we decided to focus on baby diapers and wipes because those items were not provided at that time by other sources. The diapers and wipes were much appreciated by the food bank clients. Children’s books, which are used in the reading program at the food bank, have also been collected. Feminine hygiene products were collected in 2021-22.