When Latoya Ramjit was growing up in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, her mother would travel to food pantries in New Jersey or Staten Island in hopes of finding better products than those in their neighborhood.
In her own household in Brooklyn, with her husband and their three children, ages 1, 9 and 13, Ms. Ramjit, now 33, found herself facing similar challenges in providing for her family.
The struggle with food insecurity became a bit easier for her three years ago, when a pantry opened in her daughter’s elementary school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.
“It’s a blessing,” Ms. Ramjit said. “It helps out a lot.”
The family lives in a three-bedroom apartment in a public housing complex near the school. For about five years, Ms. Ramjit’s husband, who is a mechanic, was the sole breadwinner, though she is returning to work part time this month as a counselor in an after-school arts program at her daughter’s school.
She receives food stamps, benefits that the Trump administration recently vowed to curtail, but said they were not always enough for the whole family, as prices in her neighborhood have risen over the years. She turns to the school’s pantry once every month or two.
Roughly two years ago, Ms. Ramjit came across items she had never seen at pantries before: pads and tampons. “I used to spend, like, a lot of money on just feminine products alone,” she said in an interview at her daughter’s school. She would buy about $25 worth of products every month. Over time, that adds up.
“This is not something that we should be paying for,” she said. “We can’t control our bodies. This is a need — it’s not a want.”
The menstrual products at the pantry came from Food Bank for New York City, one of 200 food banks affiliated with Feeding America, a beneficiary agency of the The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund. This year, the Food Bank received a grant from the Neediest Cases Fund endowment for its Woman to Woman initiative, which provides menstrual and personal care products to thousands of women, as well as to those who need incontinence items.
The need for feminine hygiene products came to the Food Bank’s attention about six years ago, said Margarette Purvis, the organization’s president and chief executive. The Food Bank had been hearing stories of women in need who resorted to using diapers or bunches of paper towels instead of pads.
Nearly 18 percent of women in New York age 18 and older live in poverty, according to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. Most of them are women of color. Despite the high demand, the Food Bank was not receiving any donations of menstrual products. The few items the organization had, Ms. Purvis said, came from stores that had boxes they could not sell, sometimes because women in need had opened them to steal a handful of pads or tampons.
In 2016, the Food Bank started the Woman to Woman campaign to raise awareness about so-called period poverty and collect donations of necessities. The goal, Ms. Purvis said, is to “bridge women with means with women with needs.”
The lack of access to hygiene products is an issue all women can sympathize with, Ms. Purvis said: “You tell a woman that another woman can’t afford tampons and pads, you have her attention.”
She notes that sometimes those women who are struggling also have a teenage daughter in the house. “Let me tell you something,” she said, “you don’t need to say anything else.”
After visiting schools and meeting parents in need, the organization noticed a demand for items like deodorant and diapers as well. Because toiletries are not included in the food stamp program, Ms. Ramjit said she was especially grateful to see them at the school pantry.
“The soap, the pads, the tampons, the cleaning spray,” she said. “That’s what I look for.”
In 2018, Feeding America started its own campaign, End Period Poverty, and works with Procter & Gamble to supply Always and Tampax products to roughly 20 food banks in its network, including Food Bank for New York City.
The school pantry, which opens once or twice a month and draws a large group, has helped Ms. Ramjit in more ways than one. As president of the parent-teacher association, she seizes pantry day as an opportunity to encourage more parents to be involved at the school.
“Instead of you waiting in line,” she said, “come and listen to what we have planned.”
And she is pleased that over the last couple of years, the pantry’s offerings have expanded.
“We only started out with like dry goods, and then we got the meats, and then we got the toiletries,” she said. “I’m looking forward to what comes next.”
Donations to The Neediest Cases Fund may be made online, or with a check or over the phone.
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