For some, winter is the season of nightmares. The sun disappears, leaving families stranded in the pitch black darkness. As the icy outdoors become dangerous to live in, basic human necessities like food, water, and shelter become scarce. But for women, winter brings additional needs.
For years, Noblesville’s Leo Club has carried out a unique fundraiser during the month of December. The club conducts a backpack drive, filling bags with various products for men, women, and children without homes. This season, the club is especially focusing on helping women in need of sufficient hygiene products. Senior class Vice President and Leo Club member Yati Patel is familiar with the work that the work the Leo Club has done with communities outside of NHS.
“The backpack drive is something that the homeless communities downtown look forward to every year,” Patel said. “Every year we make close to 100 backpacks full of essentials, warm clothes, food, coloring books, and lots of other things.”
Patel says contents of these backpacks can range anywhere from socks to meals that can be warmed up to feed an entire family. Still, there’s not an item within these packs that aren’t important to the people receiving them. Student Government sponsor Alyssa Muhvic notes that of all of these products, feminine hygiene products are among the most crucial, and the hardest to get.
“Women’s healthcare products are extremely hard to afford, even for people that can get them partially covered with insurance,” Muhvic said. “When your body needs those things on a monthly, sometimes weekly basis, it can be really hard trying to live.”
The Leo Club supplies products of all different types to people of all demographics. Senior Cristina Andrews has worked on the backpack drive for all four years of her high school career. During that time, she has noticed a number of products that seem like everyday items to her, but for others, can mean the world to girls and women.
“Filling up the bags makes you realize how important items that we take for granted really are,” Andrews said. “It makes a big difference for people who don’t have easy access to these things.”
Muhvic has noticed a world of women who go without the things that others encounter every second of their lives, and it’s often so much more than what is deemed as a “need.” She establishes that even things like makeup, hair products, and accessories aren’t just luxury items for women who are struggling, the need is just less physical.
”The idea that people with less need to prioritize only their essential needs comes from a place of bias and judgement,” Muhvic said. “Sometimes, people just want to feel beautiful. They want to feel empowered. They want to feel accepted by society.”
“A community encompasses all people, and we as a school are just one part of the community. Just as we are dependent on the community, the community is dependent upon us,” Muhvic said.
The members of Leo Club say they aren’t doing the things they do for the service hours, the applications, or the social recognition. The people who have stuck around — people like Andrews — act out of the knowledge that their work will impact the people they’re serving, one backpack at a time.
“Everybody has a fundamental need to feel loved,” Muhvic said. “Loved, heard, understood, and accepted.”
