An unseen need

Birmingham’s homeless residents have a regular list of needs: food, a place to sleep and seasonally appropriate clothes. But women living on the street have an extra need that’s often overlooked: pads and tampons.

“What a huge issue this is for homeless women,” said Holly Dale. “It’s just not a need that’s addressed.”

Dale, with the help of Forest Park resident Katelyn Foote and Avondale resident Raghela Scavuzzo, started the Red Spot Project in late August 2016. Their goal is to collect feminine hygiene items to distribute to local shelters and raise awareness of the need for these products to be donated.

“The biggest thing is dignity. It just seems so ridiculous to me that people don’t see it as a need,” Dale said. “I think it’s just that we don’t realize it. I didn’t think about it, and I’m a woman.”

One of the reasons feminine products frequently don’t make the list of donation items for shelters, Scavuzzo said, is there’s a taboo around talking about periods. Food or coat drives are popular — and needed — but pads and tampons are often out of sight, out of mind.

“You’re kind of brought up in a society where you don’t talk about things like that … but it’s something that’s so important and something that’s a basic necessity,” said Scavuzzo, whose full-time job is with REV’s Urban Food Project.  

That’s one part of the Red Spot Project’s goals: to take away some of the stigma around menstruation and treat it as a medical fact. “This is something that happens, and this is something people need just like medicine and food and toilet paper and everything else,” Dale said. “Being able to have those conversations and having them in an adult manner is so important and helps de-stigmatize it.”

And since she began approaching people to donate, Dale said, she’s been pleasantly surprised by how many people are willing to have that conversation.

“I had so many people who do so much good in this community say, ‘I just never thought about that,’” Dale said. “I expected it to be weirder.”

“I think it’s something too that is just becoming more visible nationwide. There’s a lot of other cities that are doing projects like this. I think there is more talk about what it’s like to be a woman on the street,” Foote said.

Even for women who have never been homeless, Dale said it’s a relatable need. A pack of tampons, she said, can give dignity.

“Every woman has probably been in a situation where you’re somewhere and you don’t have a pad or a tampon. It’s embarrassing; it’s scary,” Dale said.

The Red Spot Project held a kickoff donation event as well as a donation drive for Baton Rouge flood victims with I Am the F Bomb, a Birmingham women’s blog. They also brought donations to Boutwell Auditorium for Heart to Table, an organization of restaurants that provides meals to the homeless on nights when the city’s warming stations are open. 

Dale said they have donation boxes set up at businesses across the city, including Ruffner Mountain, Silvertron restaurant, Winslet and Rhys, Alchemy 213, Charm and RealtySouth’s Crestline office.

Marco Morosini, the owner of Silvertron, said he decided to host a donation box because it was an out-of-the-box way to fill a need. “I haven’t heard very many people that think about providing female hygiene to the homeless,” Morosini said. “When you can think about how to make people more comfortable … that’s a big plus.”

Dale said their partner business owners will often text them pictures every time a donation comes in. The momentum is building, but Scavuzzo said there’s still a lot of work to be done to get enough donations to meet the need they see.

“People immediately donate money when they think about it, but getting the traction and keeping the traction hasn’t necessarily been the easiest yet,” Scavuzzo said.

And the need is there. So far, the Red Spot Project has been in contact with the Lovelady Center, Firehouse Shelter and First Light, but Scavuzzo said donations aren’t regular enough to completely supply those shelters. “We have shelters calling and asking for it and wanting it,” she said.

Dale said they also want to be prepared for emergency situations, such as natural disasters and extreme temperatures in summer and winter, when the need for feminine products might temporarily increase.

“The idea is to be able to consistently gather enough through the grassroots donations to keep the shelters supplied and use events and fundraisers to build up a surplus for disaster relief,” Dale said.

As the Red Spot Project establishes itself, Dale said she’d like to create more hygiene packets, containing about a month’s worth of various supplies that homeless women “could easily take with them.” She also wants to hold a bra donation drive in October.

Even further in the future, Dale said she would like to create a school system program to discreetly provide donated hygiene products to female students who can’t afford them.

Before they grow to take on more than one need, Dale said she wants to “start simple and try to do it right.” Ultimately, she would like to see the Red Spot Project’s model duplicated in other cities.

Prior to starting the Red Spot Project, Dale said she would have just assumed someone else in Birmingham was taking care of this need for homeless women. Instead, she, Foote and Scavuzzo have stepped in.

“Everybody has the right to basic human needs, and somebody has to be there to help with that. So if I can be there to be that advocate, I want to be,” Scavuzzo said.

Find the Red Spot Project on Facebook.