Giving Dignity to young women in need

Recently Xero has become involved in an incredible initiative spearheaded by Dignity. Dignity is a social enterprise created by Miranda Hitchings and Jacinta Gulasekharam. It aims to provide free sanitary products for young girls in a buy one, give one model.

A lightbulb moment

Miranda and Jacinta explained that the idea for Dignity came from a discussion about how difficult it is to purchase expensive sanitary items on a student budget, and how many people who were struggling financially would have similar issues. Then the idea came to them: what if women didn’t have to buy them? From there, Dignity was born.

A win-win scenario

Dignity is an excellent opportunity to not only support young women in our community, but also to support our own female staff. At Xero, we were inspired by Miranda and Jacinta’s enthusiasm to empower young women who may not have the ability to access these products.

“Some young girls who are unable to afford these items or don’t have easy access to them are missing out on school because of it,” says Jacinta.

Another aspect of the initiative is for the accessibility of sanitary products to help remove “invisible barriers” at work. By providing free sanitary products, women will hopefully feel more supported in the workplace. Making sure our employees feel supported and empowered is a top priority for Xero, and what Dignity is trying to achieve aligns to our strategies.

How it works

The Xero Wellington team buys packages containing ten boxes of sanitary items. These go straight into our bathrooms throughout the office. At the same time, Dignity donates ten ‘give-away’ boxes to female students in high schools in need. Currently we have six team packages across our Wellington buildings and three team packages across our Auckland buildings. This means that we are supporting 90 students in need! Some of our staff were also interested in sponsoring girls individually and are now part of Dignity Club. The Dignity Club allows people to place personal orders as a group and then have their items delivered to work. Then the equivalent number of items are given to girls in need.

We’re proud to not only be supporting young enterprising kiwi women in their strive to help young girls but also to support our own team members!

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Source: Xero Blog