Sanitary Accessibility Initiative

Current Injustice and Our Goal

An injustice that we want to change in our community is the lack of access to sanitary products for families that are facing the crisis of homelessness in Cleveland, Ohio. A great struggle that many homeless shelters are facing is the lack of sanitary products from either donations or government provisions. The impact of COVID-19 has devastated local homeless shelters, and we believe that as community members, we have to support these shelters.

Our goal with this initiative was to partner with local homeless shelters and distribute hygiene kits with essential products to underrepresented communities. Not only will this effort provide aid to numerous children and adults, but it will also spark a greater movement toward emphasizing the importance of sanitary access to local organizations, and lead to more youth-inspired opinions in the Cleveland community. 

Injustice Cause and Populations Affected

These injustices predominantly affect the homeless and underserved populations in the Cleveland area. Overall, there is a lack of emphasis on providing these struggling communities with proper sanitary kits to establish hygiene habits and prevent themselves from long-term illnesses, infections, and diseases. By not emphasizing the need for sanitary and hygiene protection in homeless shelters, there is minimal access to essential products that these communities need on an everyday basis. 

We must address these injustices because providing homeless shelters with sanitary kits will not only address short-term issues but will also spark other local organizations to recognize how important it is to provide these underserved communities with sanitary kits. The increased awareness created from this project will have a long-term effect on local governments and communities recognizing this issue to a higher extent. 

Although the primary cause of homelessness is the continued systemic ill-treatment of minority populations, our project focuses on COVID-19 as a primary cause of the injustice found in the lack of sanitation awareness and product distribution, primarily among families facing homelessness. A lack of income to provide financial resources for purchasing sanitary products (such as tampons, toothbrushes and toothpaste, lotion, wipes, etc.) creates a situation in which these families can’t afford such products as a result of prioritizing food and shelter over sanitization.

Media with Women's Recovery Center and St. Herman's Shelter

Compassion. Courage. Collaboration.

We worked with two different homeless shelters and recovery centers (St. Herman’s House and the Women's Recovery Center) to understand their perspective on personal hygiene kits and how we can optimize the purchase of resources of high-quality products. We also utilized our social media platform to voice our work and allow people with different identities to interact with our project. Additionally, during the assembly process of these kits, we encouraged our members to share their opinions about the project and anything that we can improve the kits with. We demonstrated our belief in the worth and dignity of those impacted by the homelessness crisis in Cleveland by taking time during the transportation phase of our plan to talk to those directly impacted by homelessness and see first-hand what more our organization can do to help people affected by these injustices.

In our PeaceFirst Project, we took reasonable risks by purchasing sanitary products wholesale. Purchasing wholesale allowed us to make multiple hygiene packets; however, there was a risk that the sanitary items purchased through wholesale are not of the highest quality. To solve this risk, we ensured that we are purchasing well-known, trusted brands (such as Colgate and Oral-B) for our hygiene packets. 

In our project, we involved others by displaying our work through local newspapers and media stations. Furthermore, Rishabh and Nalin are the President and Vice-president, respectively, of our school's Key Club Chapter. We incorporated volunteers from our club to work with us on our PeaceFirst project. 

Environmental Sustainability Initiative

Cleveland Gives Back is partnering with the Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District (NEORSD) to organize a Green Infrastructure (GI) Site visit for local high schoolers to learn more about the environmental impact that an individual makes. Additionally, later in the Spring of 2023, NEORSD and Cleveland Gives Back organized a tree-planting event for high schoolers. Stay tuned to learn about your impact on the environmental sustainability projects in Northeast Ohio! 

Food Bank Assistance Program