Prime Minister New Zealand Jacinda Ardern was at Fairfield College in Hamilton to give details about phase two of combating period poverty in schools. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Associate Education Minister Jan Tinetti made the announcement at Fairfield College in Hamilton. Jacinda Ardern said Last year we decided that it wasn’t good enough that as many as one in twelve students were missing school because they couldn’t access period products, and we started a pilot project at schools like Fairfield College to see whether we could make a difference by providing products at school for free.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that from June we’ll be rolling our free period products in primary, intermediates, secondary schools and kura across the country. There are enough barriers that our children and young people face as they grow up – access to period products shouldn’t be one of them!
Fairfield College nurse Shelley Bowe, who has been fighting for free sanitary products in schools for years, said Arden’s announcement has been a long time coming. “It’s very heartbreaking some of the stories we get to hear,” Bowe said. “We hear about students not wanting to come to school because they need to spread their products out. “That means they’re either wearing a tampon for a longer period of time than they should, and so they are scared of leaking, or they only have one tampon to last the whole day. She’s also spoken with some students who have had to use rags because they live in bigger families and their parents can’t afford to buy the products. Some families will also go without their daughters, so they make sacrifices in other areas.
