Perigives 1 Favorite 

The public bathrooms at Penn Station in New York City are a dirty, depressing place. But now, there’s a bright spot: a poster that encourages women to donate menstrual products, like pads or tampon, to help the many homeless women who frequent the bathroom.

Erin Da Eun Song, a graphic designer, created the posters under the moniker the Perigives project. Song first learned about the challenges that homeless women face when it comes to access to menstrual products during a conversation with a friend–and decided to do something about it.

In the United States, about 216,000 women are homeless, but homeless shelters aren’t required to give out menstrual products. These products are also more expensive than they should be thanks to what’s known as the tampon tax, which taxes menstrual products as if they weren’t a basic necessity. At shelters, they’re often one of the most-needed items, due to their expense; some homeless women end up using toilet paper to clean up menstrual blood. The lack of solutions to this problem reflects the dearth of design focused on solving problems that only impact women.

To make it easier for homeless women to get access to these products, Song teamed up with art director Yitong Shen and Huge art director Jae Who, to prototype ideas.

Now anyone can download the poster that they designed, make the pocket using some double-sided tape, and affix it to the wall of a bathroom where women might need access to pads. While Song doesn’t know how many people have downloaded posters, she’s seen a great response on social media, where people have tagged the team in Instagram stories and even raised money on Facebook to print the posters out.

Beyond improving the posters’ sturdiness, Who says that they’re working on translating the poster into different languages and making those available for download online. Eventually, the hope is to turn the initiative into a nonprofit. Other organizations address this issue by advocating for access to pads and tampons in homeless shelters or buy menstrual products in bulk to donate, but Perigives provides a solution where homeless women really need it.