OU Women’s Health Advocacy and the OU Food Pantry launched their collaborative project, “Flow on the Go,” Wednesday to supply university students, faculty and staff with free monthly menstruation products.
OU WHA President Emily Carr said her organization has been directly working with the OU Food Pantry for around six months to figure out the logistics of Flow on the Go.
Carr said OU WHA benefits from working with the food pantry on this project because all of its funding is donation-based, while the pantry has more consistent funding.
“Our partnership with OU Food Pantry allows another avenue to obtain access to menstrual products,” Carr said. “Because the food pantry has private donations from different sponsors or companies that give them shipments of menstrual products, it’s not solely coming from our supply.”
According to Carr, WHA currently operates around 70 menstrual stations in bathrooms across campus. These stations have stickers with QR codes on them that previously opened a link to request a free menstrual cup. Carr said these stickers will be replaced with new QR codes that open OU WHA’s Linktree where people can access the Flow on the Go form.
A graphic about the OU Women's Health Advocacy's Flow on the Go partnership with the OU Food Pantry.
Carr said the organization doesn’t know what to expect from the first day of pickups on Oct. 6, but she said there is usually a lot of traffic at the organization’s menstrual stations.
“We are anticipating that it is a highly needed service,” Carr said. “We’re excited to see what that first order looks like.”
Shreya Lingamallu, associate director of health and advocacy for the OU Food Pantry, said the pantry first reached out to OU WHA in April 2023 about the project. One of the main struggles last spring was deciding who would fill Flow on the Go orders since the health and advocacy team didn’t exist yet, Lingamallu said.
Lingamallu said she is hopeful that the first pickup will get the word out about the project as well as sustainable menstrual products.
“Offering reusable menstrual products is one of my primary goals,” Lingamallu said. “We're hoping that through this first pickup, we can kind of get more people introduced to the idea of using a sustainable menstrual product.”
The Flow on the Go form is now available for OU community members to fill out monthly for free menstrual products customized to their needs. The first product pickup is Oct. 6 from 10:30 a.m. to noon at the OU Food Pantry.
“I think it would be so great to see hundreds of people using this service,” Lingamallu said. “Even if we just serve a few people that’s better than nothing, and that is all I’ve dreamed about.”
This story was edited by Taylor Jones, Peggy Dodd and Alexia Aston. Grace Rhodes and Mary Ann Livingood copy edited this story.
