Addressing inequity
What we do.
The Kwek Society was founded by Eva Marie Carney in early 2018. Eva is a dual citizen of the United States and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, an elected legislator for the Nation, and a human rights lawyer. The Kwek Society works to shine a light on and address menstrual and other inequities in Indigenous communities.
Eva’s eyes were opened to the shocking rate of period poverty on rural Indigenous reservations when she read Why Many Native American Girls Skip School When They Have Their Periods, by Eleanor Goldberg.
In the piece, a Pine Ridge Reservation student reports that about half of her friends can’t afford tampons or period pads so they have to skip school for as long as a week when they are on their periods, and then fall farther and farther behind in class. Eva found untenable this injustice of missing out on school due to a lack of access to period products. She launched The Kwek Society with a particular focus on getting period care to community members without ready access to these expensive products. (“Kwe’k” means “women” in the Potawatomi language.)
One in Four Students Struggled to Purchase Period Products this year.
An essential need.
Many Indigenous people refer to the time of menstruation as their “moon time.” Early on, Eva worked with several fellow Potawatomi kwe’k to develop The Kwek Society’s signature “moon time bags.” These are colorful cotton bags sewn by supporters and stuffed with pads and liners. The bags allow menstruators to keep supplies on hand when one’s moon time approaches. You can read more about how we developed our moon time bags here.
Fast forward to late 2024 when these same Potawatomi kwe’k brought to us a pattern for our Auntie Bags, which are larger cotton drawstring bags that we encourage our supporters to sew for us and fill with a cycle full of supplies. We call them “Auntie Bags” because they reflect the love and support of all the aunties out there – trusted adults who care about students. You can find the Auntie Bags pattern here.
Since 2018, The Kwek Society has expanded to provide period supplies to students living in cities and suburbs and, as our resources permit, to get supplies to other Indigenous community members who can’t afford these expensive necessities. We believe that every person deserves sufficient supplies to maintain dignity and celebrate their strength during their moon time.
We are very small. Our Founder, Eva, now serves as our Executive Director. She is supported by several young women who are passionate about our mission and work for us part-time. A majority of our board members are Indigenous women. We believe that our respect for tribal traditions has been integral to our growth.
To meet the specific period product needs of those we serve, we seek out the trusted adults working within our partner schools and community-based organizations serving indigenous students. Our objective is to support the dignity of each person we serve and to meet individual preferences for period supplies whenever possible.
Our mission
Meet the need.
The Kwek Society works to end period poverty in Indigenous communities in the United States while celebrating individual dignity, agency, and success.
We provide Indigenous students and their peers, as well as certain Indigenous communities, period care items, including our moon time bags filled with supplies.
We curate and share widely period education materials and traditional Indigenous teachings about periods that center menstruators.
And we work to shine a light on the inequities experienced by those we help.
The Kwek Society is a strong force pertaining to the issue of period poverty. Our school district serves a large Native American population and the grants of moon time bags have helped these students be more present in school as well as open doors to more conversations educating young students about puberty.
The Kwek Society provides so much more than just grants, they are encouraging and share their expertise to expand services to all menstruating students in various ways.
Non-profit excellence
Dedicated to impact.
The Kwek Society is committed to ending period poverty in Indigenous communities. We are also committed to thriving as a respected and well-run non-profit performing with transparency and excellence.
Here are some of our milestones to date:
Early Days
Here are some of our milestones to date:
- Early 2018: We obtained our 501(c)(3) public charity tax-exempt status from the IRS.
- Early 2019: We earned GuideStar’s highest level of recognition – its Platinum Seal of Transparency. We continue to maintain that recognition.
- Early 2019: We received our first donation from a sovereign Native Nation, the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi.
- Summer 2019: We received a substantial in-kind donation of tampons and pads purchased and delivered by the Citizen Potawatomi Nation to 20 schools in Oklahoma and New Mexico, which allowed us to proceed with new partnerships, knowing the 20 schools who got CPN donations were taken care of for the school year.
- Late 2019: We were recognized at the Reykjavik Global Forum – World Leaders with the Power Together Award.
- Late 2019: We were awarded our first public grant — a $2,500 Winter Assistance grant by MissionBox, an online hub for nonprofits — which we used to purchase a special supplement of period supplies for students in 15 of the schools and programs we support, to eliminate their concerns about addressing their moon times in a dignified way while on holiday break and out of reach of their schools’ supplies.
- Early 2020: The Kwek Society was invited to become an Allied Program of the Alliance for Period Supplies, a national organization working to ensure that individuals in need have access to essential period products required to participate fully in daily life.
- Summer 2020: We received our first foundation grant from The Burkehaven Family Foundation.
- Late 2020: The Sparkjoy Foundation awarded us a sizable grant and we added to our board of directors an Ontario, Canada-based First Nations kwe (woman).
- First half of 2021: We expanded our reach across North America with the addition of four new Canadian-based partners, new school partners in Arizona and New Mexico, and a community renewal non-profit in Oklahoma, and we expanded our Board of Directors. We are 10 women strong, and 8 of us are Indigenous kwe’k (women).
- Second half of 2021: We secured our first multi-year grant from The Burkehaven Family Foundation, giving us the cushion needed to operate, expand and innovate. By late September, we added another First Nations partner situated in Canada, along with a tribally operated school in Iowa, two tribally operated health clinics in Oklahoma and an additional school partner in South Dakota. We continued our outreach to school and community leaders.
- End of 2021: We added a Navajo boarding school in Farmington, New Mexico, and cemented relationships with New Mexico partners during our site visits in November 2021. We began distributing washable “Glad Rags” period pads to several of our New Mexico partners—hoping this will foster our sustainability (and reflect our accountability to our Mother Earth). With the help of the Alliance for Period Supplies and U by Kotex®, in December 2021 we showered tampons on Indigenous schools and communities across Northern Maine. And we received generous donations and commitments for future profits from so many throughout the last quarter of 2021, including from It’s August, PERIOD Ontario, Chingona Makes, and thicfigtattoo. And, in mid-December, we forged a partnership with Bras for Girls, which began shipping sports bras and education pamphlets on breast development to students in some of our partner schools.
Expanding Our Reach
- First half of 2022: We secured funding from The Roundhouse Foundation and the Citizen Potawatomi Nation that allows us to continue expanding our reach throughout Indigenous North America while meeting our obligations to all of the existing partners we supply with period products. We added schools in three new states, Alaska, Colorado, and Nevada, and new community partners in Colorado, Oregon, and South Dakota, raising our number of partners throughout the U.S. and Canada to 87. We accepted from U by Kotex® (through the Alliance for Period Supplies) a very sizeable donation of pads and liners for the students attending Central Consolidated School District Schools (New Mexico) and celebrated the milestone of distributing more than 1,000,000 period supplies since we started in 2018.
- Second half of 2022: By year-end, we blew past the one-million-period-supplies-donated milestone to 1.2 MILLION! In August, we were recognized by Walmart and Always as one of 50 “Period Heroes” working across the United States to end period poverty. That recognition came with a substantial donation of Always pads, which helped boost our donation numbers. The donation was split among larger school districts we support in New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. Among the new commitments we made were commitments to stock the restrooms of Haskell Indian Nations University in Lawrence, Kansas, supported by a new funder, the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, and period supplies and puberty education support to the Shiprock Office of Diné Youth, which serves hundreds upon hundreds of Navajo Nation youth living in Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. The latter partnership was made possible by funding from two other sovereign Nations, the Notawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi and the Forest County Potawatomi; further support – in the form of donation of hundreds of sports bras – came from Bras for Girls.
- First half of 2023: We hired our first part-time kwe (woman) to support our programming! We were granted funds by The Pad Project’s Pads Across America to supply 17 cases of organic pads from Be Prepared Period to students we support. This donation allowed us to once again invite students in need to take enough pads to see them through summer break. In April 2023, we joined forces with Indigenous Women Rising, sharing an information table at the largest U.S. powwow — The Gathering of Nations PowWow in Albuquerque, New Mexico; by early March, we reached the milestone of 1.4 million supplies donated and added three additional partners in Ontario province.
- June through September 2023: We received another generous donation from The Pad Project that helped us tremendously in restocking schools with pads for the start of the new school year. The Wildhorse Foundation also generously funded our pad purchases. In August 2023 we added 3 new school partners. Earlier in the summer, we were excited to be part of Rock the Rez, getting needed period care items to campers and staff participating in two music camps on South Dakota reservations.
In September we received multi-pallet donations of Tampax tampons from Proctor & Gamble, which we directed to the 15 Central Consolidated School District schools we support in New Mexico. Our terrific friends at Bras for Girls continue to provide sports bras to the students we support – during the first 8 months of 2023, they donated 1,578 bras! And our work is getting noticed! Our efforts to address period poverty in North American Indigenous communities were featured in an article in Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health’s Harvard Public Health newsletter that was republished by the Boston Globe. - Last quarter 2023: We added school districts in two new states, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and additional school partners in New Mexico and South Dakota. We received a massive donation of period care items from UbyKotex, which we directed to the many schools that comprise the Oklahoma City Public School District. With that donation, we surpassed the 2.7 million period care items milestone, and at year-end, we supported 198 schools and community-based organizations!
- Native Voices Rising committed meaningful financial support to us such that we anticipated hiring a professional Executive Director in 2024. We expect to pursue that initiative, instead, in 2025. The period care company August donated a share of its profits to us during Native American Heritage Month, and we were one of four nonprofits selected by Outside PR to receive their promotional and branding support during 2024 as part of its JEDI (Justice, Equality, Diversity & Inclusivity) work! And the full-year count of bras donated by Bras for Girls reached 2,434.
Our Work Today
- First half of 2024: We accepted with delight the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians’ and its Four Winds Casinos’ big check (see photo below) and five-year commitment to our work, and also welcomed generous support from the nonprofits Albuquerque Involved and The Kathryn McQuade Foundation. We expanded our reach to North Dakota and Michigan and added additional school partners in South Dakota and Wisconsin. We restocked almost all of our partner schools, and secured a generous donation of Always pads, which caused us to hit a period care items milestone of 3 million. Late in the quarter, we received a commitment from Poise to supply a mind-boggling 500,000 period pads and liners, and UbyKotex offered another large commitment of pads, which will bring us close to the 4-million-items-distributed mark! Acting on our belief that it is vital that more Indigenous views and voices are heard in mental health and menstrual experience research, we began collaborating with Cornell University’s Adolescent Transitions Lab. Lab researchers are investigating adolescent perceptions of menstrual pain; specifically, we are introducing some of our school partners to the researchers, who will follow standard research protocols and administer their surveys in Fall 2024.
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Third quarter of 2024: After hitting the 4-million-items distributed mark, we blew past it to 4.3 million products distributed by September 2024. Cherokee Middle and High Schools in North Carolina became the first partner schools we are supporting in that state and in the Southern United States; we also added our first school in Washington state, Paschal Sherman Indian School. We accepted new, generous donations from funders Wildhorse Foundation, the The Pad Project, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, Waub Ajijaak Press & Foundation, and Gun Lake Tribe (the Match-E-Be-Nash-She-Wish Band of Pottawatomi). We engaged a bookkeeping firm to free up our Executive Director from data entry and account reconciliation duties, and we began receiving promotional and branding support gifted to us by Outside PR.
- Final quarter of 2024: At year-end 2024 we approached the 4.6-million-items distributed mark with generous product donations from The Honey Pot Company, moon time bag donations from ANA, and the General Peter Gansevoort (Albany, NY) Chapter of the National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, new funding from the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of the Potawatomi, and many dear individuals’ monetary and in-kind donations.
- We added as school partners three more tribal colleges — Fort Lewis College in Colorado, Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College in Michigan, and College of Menominee Nation in Wisconsin — distributing donated Saalt period cups as well as other period care items to their students.
- We introduced our Auntie Bags and received the first donations of these, filled with a cycle’s worth of supplies; we shared the bags with students attending Pleasant Grove School in Oklahoma and McIntosh School in South Dakota.
Founder & President Eva Marie Carney, fourth from right, receiving The Kwek Society’s Power Together award from the Reykjavik (Iceland) Global Forum – World Leaders in November 2019, alongside twenty-four other organisations using our Power, Together to end the stigma of menstruation that still plagues society.
Four Winds Casino donation awardees, January 2024. Founder Eva Marie Carney, front row, standing with Pokagon Tribal Council members
Photo credit: Pokagon Potawatomi Band of Potawatomi Indians.
Your donations fund our critical work to support dignity and affirm Indigenous people. They are tax-deductible pursuant to IRS rules. We stretch every dollar to the limit: our founder and everyone else on our board volunteers their time, and we tirelessly pursue donations of period supplies, postage, and more to reduce expenses.
You can find the most up-to-date information on our partnerships, operations and impact by reviewing our GuideStar Nonprofit Profile.
I feel the need to tell you again about the HUGE difference your program has made in the lives of our students. You have provided us with what we’ve needed to work toward full destigmatization of periods and of the experience of puberty.
You can support our mission directly with your donations, checks, packages and correspondence to:
501(c)(3) number (EIN): 82-4369803
Mail correspondence, checks to:
The Kwek Society
Attn: Eva Marie Carney
P.O. Box 5595
Arlington, VA 22205
Delivery address for period care items, moon time, and Auntie bags:
The Kwek Society
4700 Eisenhower Ave. Office #103
Arlington, VA 22304
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