Berry Caring: East alum Micheala Miller owns and runs “Strawberry Week,” a non-profit that fights period poverty

In the East school bathroom stall with four of her closest friends, then 14 year-old Micheala Miller was overwhelmed. Tampons, panty liners and pads were being waved in her face as her friends kept talking over each other — it was her first period.

With the nearly non-existent period and sex education at East, she had to take her peer’s advice on the sensitive situation despite their lack of prior knowledge.

Now-East alumni Miller owns and runs Strawberry Week — a non-profit organization aiming to end period poverty and break the stigma surrounding periods by normalizing periods and making products accessible to everyone. Strawberry Week works with businesses around Kansas City to collect and distribute period products to everyone in need. Miller aims to prevent today’s teens from experiencing period horror stories like her own.

Miller began curating programs after noticing that period products are only provided in the nurse’s office at most schools. She’s outraged that menstruators are forced to choose between wasting class time to visit the nurse and hiding tampons in their sleeves to discreetly take care of their period at school.

“Your period is an unavoidable anatomical event, just like using the bathroom,” Miller said. “Imagine if you had to go to the nurse’s office to get toilet paper.”

Strawberry Week stresses the importance of making period products easily accessible — something Miller believes existing non-profits that solely provide food stamps and basic hygiene products regularly neglect. 

According to Miller, the high taxation rates are what make period products much less affordable. In Kansas, period products are taxed as luxury items, meaning they’re considered non-essential, according to ksrevenue.gov.

Strawberry Week hosts two big collection drives a year — one in May for Period Poverty Awareness Week and another in November called “Flowvember.” Each drive provides Strawberry Week with enough products to last until the next one takes place — collecting nearly 19,000 products. During the drives, businesses will participate by collecting period products and donating them to Strawberry Week at the end of the month. Although some businesses collect items consistently throughout the year, the drives are the easiest way for Strawberry Week to expand their reach.

After they’re collected, the products get distributed to their partnering companies like Children’s Mercy, Jewish Family Services, Kansas City Public Library and the Kansas Department for Children and Families. These companies and nonprofits distribute products among their restrooms or hand out “period packs” — a reusable bag with seven tampons, seven pantie  liners and seven pads — to anyone in need.

According to Miller, another major obstacle to her non-profit is stigma around periods from men. Her intern Aiva Bucko agrees and has noticed how it affects menstruators’ self esteem.

“If this happened to men it would be so different,” Bucko said. “I think it wouldn’t be something people are ashamed of.”

When approaching businesses asking if they’d host a collection drive, Miller gets responses like, “We can’t have those products here because it’s too political” or “We can’t collect the boxes because they make our employees lose their appetites while on lunch break.”

Many of these organizations host food drives and other charity events for other reasons and will still turn down Miller due to the political factor associated with periods.

“I feel that a lot of [the political factor] has to do with the battle between our government and people with uteruses to begin with,” Miller said. 

This stigma makes Strawberry Week’s mission more difficult. According to Miller, if half of the population refuses to address a subject and fix it, advancements won’t be made. This is why Strawberry Week focuses on normalizing conversations about periods in general.

“If our society wasn’t historically a boy’s club, then I think all this stuff would’ve long, long ago been made more accessible,” Director and Miller’s husband Ford Miller said. “Everyone would’ve recognized how necessary these products are.”