Meet the high schooler fighting period poverty in Cumberland County Schools

When your period hits and you’re unprepared, Amber Johnson is the girl you can rely on to have an extra pad on her. While attending Gray’s Creek Middle School, she stayed stocked on pads and sanitary wipes for the students who didn’t have any.

Now a senior at Gray’s Creek High School, she wants to ensure no student goes without access to menstrual products. On Jan. 27, she stood before the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners and asked for annual funding for menstrual product pantries in all Cumberland County public middle and high schools.

“Allocating funding is not just a financial decision,” Johnson said in her presentation to the board. “It is an investment in the future of our students.”

The GAPP closets

Johnson wants to establish Girls Against Period Poverty closets, or GAPP Closets, that provide a non-judgmental environment for students to access menstrual products free of charge.

“If the closet is very open and very welcoming, girls won’t feel ashamed about the problems that they might have [accessing menstrual products], whether it’s their finances or just having a period in general,” Johnson told CityView.

In 2023, the non-profit PERIOD. found that almost a quarter of students nationwide struggled to afford menstruation products like tampons and pads. Around 44% reported stress and embarrassment around their lack of access to period products.

Those students, some of which Johnson said are at Gray’s Creek High School, are suffering from period poverty. It’s a term that describes a person’s inability to access menstrual products, hygienic facilities and/or menstrual health education.

Menstrual products are only getting harder to access. The price of a pack of tampons in the U.S. has increased by 36% since 2019. Pad costs on average have increased by 41%. In 2021, the National Organization for Women found that the average menstruating person spent about $20 on period products per cycle, totaling around $18,000 over a lifetime.  

Adding to the total cost is North Carolina and the county’s sales tax, which amounts to a 7% tax on menstrual products. The state is one of 20 states that taxes menstrual products. 

Johnson knows the cost of menstrual products is hard for many students and their families to cover every month. Half of Cumberland County’s households make at or below $29,390 annually. Just over 15% of residents live in poverty.

“If we go to the store, they’re [the products], $7 to $8 and some people’s cycles last for the whole month or months going on end,” Johnson said. “So, if you put all those factors into it, it could be a lot [to afford].”

Several Cumberland County schools, including Gray’s Creek High School and Alger B. Wilkins High School, provide menstrual products in their school pantries. However, Lisa Stewart, Gray’s Creek High School principal, said the school’s “Bear Necessities” food pantry often runs out of period products since it has a very limited supply to serve the almost 1,400 students, their families and the broader community.

It’s why Stewart is so proud of Johnson for taking the initiative to create the GAPP closets.

“Knowing that she sees that there’s a need, then there’s really a need because she’s out there with the kids more than we are,” Stewart told CityView. “This is important. It’s going to impact a lot of young ladies throughout the entire Cumberland County area.”

Johnson is collecting menstrual product donations from the community while she waits for the county commissioners to decide whether to fund the GAPP closets. She is holding a donation drop-off event at her home church, the Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church on Raeford Road, on March 1 from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Addressing absenteeism through period dignity

Johnson’s GAPP closets would address another issue plaguing Cumberland County Schools: absenteeism.

Around a third of CCS students were chronically absent in the 2023-24 school year, meaning they missed at least 10% of the days they were enrolled in school, CityView previously reported. One in five girls across the U.S. missed school because they didn’t have menstrual products according to Procter & Gamble, which owns period product brands Always, Tampax and This is L. A quarter of teens said they couldn’t do their school work because they couldn’t access the products.

“I just want to make sure that anytime they go to school, they aren’t missing out on instructional time because they lacked menstrual supplies,” Johnson said.

Johnson has also been helping young menstruating people feel more confident going to class while on their period through the workshops she’s held at Lewis Chapel Missionary Baptist Church. The workshops have gathered over 50 menstruating people to help them destigmatize their period.

“I heard from one of the young ladies, they were always told growing up how it [periods] was something that was disgusting, that it shouldn’t be a public thing that you should be discussing,” Johnson said. “But if it’s a naturally occurring thing that’s going on in your body, it should be normalized so we can destigmatize any negative meanings or connotations behind it.”

The destigmatization through freely available menstrual products in schools and increased conversation about periods is part of Johnson’s fight for period dignity. 

“Period dignity to me is being able to, number one, acknowledge that women have cycles,” Johnson said. “And, number two, just being able to accept that it is a natural thing that occurs in women and that you shouldn’t feel ashamed about it because of somebody’s comments or somebody’s beliefs, because of how you grew up or your socioeconomic status.”

The GAPP closets are the final step in Johnson’s Girl Scout Gold Award project, titled Project Freedom: Empowering Period Dignity. After graduating in the spring, Johnson hopes to use the experiences she’s gained by teaching others about period dignity as she pursues a degree in psychology, specifically studying adolescent disorders.

CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the CityView News Fund.