Northeast Florida’s largest nonprofit food bank has merged with a longtime partner, and it will result in more medical items available to women during their menstrual periods.
Feeding Northeast Florida merged with Renewing Dignity and is now known as Renewing Dignity: A Program of Feeding Northeast Florida.
Feeding Northeast Florida has served the area since 2014 and helps the more than 260,000 people who suffer from some level of food insecurity across 12 counties.
Renewing Dignity’s mission is to eliminate “period poverty” through distribution of menstrual products, education and advocacy.
While the need for food and basic necessities remains high, Feeding Northeast Florida president and CEO Susan King said there are many other needs that women and girls face. Nationally, 2 in 5 people struggle to purchase necessary products during their menstrual periods, she said.
“They are very expensive and are essential to being able to live a normal, day-to-day life,” King said. “You have a very heavy period, or really any period, and you don’t have product — you miss school, you miss work, you miss participating in life. It is a financial drain. … It’s a little bit like diapers. You can’t have a baby without diapers.”
