On March 8, 2017, Camions of Care changed our name and brand to what is now PERIOD. The Menstrual Movement. The day was an exciting one ― full of gratitude, pride, excitement, and inspiration.
Flashback a little over two years ago, in the summer of 2014…
I sat on an airplane coming back from my first leadership conference (ANNpower, now name-changed to HERlead), where I had spent four days brainstorming ideas for how I could begin fighting for menstrual equity at the age of sixteen. Although I was still in the beginnings of brainstorming my business plan, I knew that my priority was to somehow distribute tampons, pads, and other period products to those who needed them. I wanted to provide a service that would directly deliver these products so that periods did not pose any sort of hindrance to someone feeling less confident and dignified. I thought that the solution to this would be to have a mobile service.
My thoughts raced on the plane as I brainstormed trying to figure out a name ― jumping between tampons to pads to driving to shelters to cars and...trucks!
I typed in “truck” to Thesaurus.com, and the word “Camion” came up. I tacked on an “s” to the end of that and a couple weeks later, Camions of Care was born.
When I founded this nonprofit, my only goal was to bring period products to homeless women in Portland ― some of whom were the ones who inspired me to take action after connecting with them during my family’s experience living without a home of our own. At the time, I don’t think I fathomed the need of the services Camions of Care’s mission was setting out to address, or the potential for growth as an organization.
Since then, we have addressed over 75,000 periods through 43 nonprofit partners in 27 states and 14 countries, and we have 65 campus chapter at universities and high schools around the United States. Within a few weeks of our existence, it became clear that there was demand for us to be much more than a product provider, we had a chance to act as leading advocates for a movement: The Menstrual Movement ― fighting for equitable access to menstrual hygiene.
With our new name, we are pushing for change just by engaging others in saying the name of our organization, and we are coming out as youth leading The Menstrual Movement. We strive to invest in creating partnerships with other organizations that unite with us around similar missions and values to change the narrative around periods.
One thing that I have learned from leading this organization is that time is precious ― because it doesn’t take much to make a difference. With our new name, we have saved ourselves time to invest in advocating and talking about our programs and goals, and mission in general, rather than spending time explaining what the word “Camions” means or where our name came from.
The success and growth of our organization was made possible by people ― from the donors who gave us the resources to make an impact, to the board members who guided us, to the partners that worked with us to make our services available, and especially to the youth behind our organization:
- Vincent (Co-Founder and Operations Director and freshman at Cornell University), who built the infrastructure of our organization and coordinates our distribution partnerships.
- Silas (high school junior), who coordinates all distribution of product in Portland and abroad, and manages our warehouses and inventories.
- Louise (high school junior), who directs our care packaging events and engages our volunteer base.
- Claire (high school senior), who supervises the onboarding and offboarding of chapters, and directs overall communications with our chapter network.
- Tara (high school junior), who seeks opportunities to engage new audiences to our organization.
- Roland (high school junior), who creates beautiful graphics and designs for visual representation around our programs and initiatives.
- Maya (high school junior) and Nika (high school senior), who have invested so much into contributing to the development of our policy program (coming soon).
The development of our new name and brand was an amazing experience, made possible by our board and the firms we were able to collaborate with. In early Fall 2016, we connected with Mechanica, a digital agency based in Boston. Not only did they help us to narrow down our name to the simplicity of PERIOD, but they also created and refined our logo and corresponding design elements.
I had the opportunity to at one point sit down with the Founder, Libby Delana, and her team to discuss the voice and personality of our brand. As we sat outside a cafe in Harvard Square, I was filled with warmth and this new giddy feeling of excitement and immense determination. I remember feeling myself tear up as Libby explained Mechanica’s commitment to follow through with developing our new brand. I felt honored and perhaps a bit shocked. It still blows me away that an established firm like Mechanica would contribute their talents, expertise, and creativity to an organization that was just a dream brewing in my head less than three years ago.
I felt this same excitement and deep gratitude when I first met with the female founders of Swift, a full-service digital agency based in Portland, Oregon. My co-founder and I, along with Heather Hardy (board president) and Nancy Monsarrat (board member, branding chair), sat in a room with the female founders of Swift in December. We looked at each other and shared our similar feelings of pleasant surprise and honor as Swift committed to developing our new website with a full team, pro-bono. I bit my lip as they made that commitment to us, trying not to explode with joyous shrieks and hugs ― it felt extremely meaningful to have companies like Mechanica and Swift invest time and energy into PERIOD. As a young person leading a non-profit, my qualifications and age are questioned quite often, and it is sometime difficult to maintain confidence in my ability sometimes. Having this sort of support felt reassuring and motivating, and absolutely empowering.
Just a few months later, we found ourselves looking at a website that exceeded all expectations. It brought our new brand to life and created pathways for our audience to get involved and take action in support of our Menstrual Movement.
In February, my co-founder and I flew back to Portland to spend a day with our team at the Swift studio with Narrative Alchemy and Waters Photographs. Narrative Alchemy is a new start-up organization that produced our new promo video to bring voice and faces to our movement, and Sarah Waters of Waters Photographs made our website personal with the portraits she contributed to our website.
The development of our new name and brand had an extremely fast turnaround, and I am filled with immense gratitude recalling how many different voices played into bringing it to life on March 8, 2017. This simpler and bolder brand has brought our movement to a whole new level in terms of capacity for impact, and I am honored and excited to continue collaborating and advocating for equitable access to menstrual hygiene. We hope you join us.
For more information about PERIOD, visit period.org. Please consider donating to our organization — for every $2 donated, we are able to provide another woman with everything she needs for an entire menstrual cycle. For every $100, we are able to establish a new distributing chapter in a new area.