Thursday, January 05, 2023

Massachusetts

‘Period poverty’ addressed during 
Gov. Maura Healey- Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll tour

Preinaugural events highlight community service



Jan. 4, 2023 – Incoming Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll visit Lowell High, where students, staff and volunteers are stuffing 1,000 confidence packs of personal hygiene products for students in need. From left, Healey greets Lowell High seniors Annamaria Mbuyu, Ann Kirsten Tweneh and Beatrice Nji. (Julia Malakie/Lowell Sun)

By MELANIE GILBERT | mgilbert@lowellsun.com |
 January 4, 2023

LOWELL — It wasn’t a rock concert, but the energy felt electric when incoming Gov. Maura Healey and Lt. Gov. Kim Driscoll entered the cafeteria of Lowell High School Wednesday afternoon.

It was their last stop on “Team Up Massachusetts,” a community service-oriented tour that included LHS’s Catie’s Closet.

The crowd surged forward and enveloped the pair, phones were held aloft to snap photos, while others stood on tables and chairs to get a better look at the incoming leadership to Beacon Hill. Healey and Driscoll, who will be sworn in on Thursday, will serve as the nation’s first all-female governor and lieutenant governor duo.

After greeting local and state-level dignitaries, staff and students, Healey and Driscoll got to work, grabbing reusable shopping bags and filling them with personal-care products stocked high on a long row of tables.

“This week was about community service around this great state,” Healey said. “There’s a lot of need — food, housing, clothing — and Kim and I recognize that, and we want to be ready to deliver for people, especially those who are struggling right now.”

Catie’s Closet, a place where the clothing and hygiene needs of unhoused students or those facing other economic hardships can be met at the school they attend, was selected to represent the incoming administration’s focus on making the commonwealth more affordable, bringing communities together and giving back to those in need.

“It’s great to be in a place that is helping students, particularly students in a Gateway City,” Driscoll said. “As the mayor of Salem, I know how (important it is) to get what you need in school. Schools are more than just a place that’s educating kids — we’re thinking about the whole child and that’s what this project symbolizes to us.”

The 1,000 bags included typical items such as shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste and toothbrushes, but they also have what Catie’s Closet founder Anne-Marie Sousa called items to address “period poverty.”

“The number of days of school that females miss due to not having the money to purchase products for their periods is unacceptable,” she said. “Our main mission is to keep kids in school and reduce absenteeism, so this became a sub-project for us. Young women at LHS can pick out clothing and period supplies for free.”

Sousa is the mother to Catie Bisson, a 2008 LHS graduate who died in 2010 after a lengthy battle with Loeys-Dietz syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects connective tissue. Bisson was 20, but had already envisioned a place where students would get their needs met. Her family founded the first Catie’s Closet in an unused room at LHS in 2010.

The Dracut-based nonprofit now has spaces in 120 schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.

“This is very overwhelming to be honest with you,” Sousa said, with teary eyes as she watched at least 100 volunteers assemble bags. “The governor-elect was presented with some options, and we were one that she chose. To bring that kind of awareness to what we do — it’s humbling. It’s more special that I can even say.”

LHS freshmen and Student Council members Sireiyutta Yam and Shyleen Mtiziwa were some of the student volunteers tying greeting tags to completed bags. Yam came to Lowell from Siem Reap, Cambodia, three years ago; Mtiziwa is newly arrived from Zimbabwe.

“I am so new — I came to this country four months ago,” Mtiziwa said. “People are so nice. When I saw the invitation to volunteer, I thought, ‘I want to do something. I want to help people.’”

Healey said that was the community-service aspect she was looking for when putting together the five-city tour that also visited Springfield, Worcester, Taunton and South Yarmouth.

“While campaigning, I really enjoyed seeing young people take the initiative out there in their community leading on all sorts of projects and endeavors,” Healey said. “It’s sad that Catie is no longer with us, but her initiative — and her family’s initiative — starting something like this to help other young people, is really beautiful, and that’s what brings us here today.”




   

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