Haleema Bharoocha is a weightlifter and a policy shifter. She is a fierce advocate and county commissioner who has her eyes trained on the needs of girls and gender-expansive youth. Haleema is also a Solís Policy Institute alum.
As COVID unraveled traditional and informal support networks for girls of color, Haleema and her team at Alliance for Girls put together digital town halls and online surveys to hear directly from young people. Part of what she heard was the critical need for pads and tampons. So she went to work.
Alongside Young Women’s Freedom Center and community partners, Haleema advocated to put $1M towards ending period poverty for the 63,168 women, girls, and menstruating individuals struggling to pay for period products in the County of Santa Clara. And they won.
Haleema’s work to end period poverty and listen closely to girls and young people about their COVID experiences was funded, in part, by an Alum Advocacy grant. As part of our Giving Tuesday campaign, we are asking for our community’s support in building our resources to support more projects like this one.
This is the only time of year that we fundraise specifically for our Alum Advocacy Fund. Whether or not you are able to give today, together we can ensure that the creative doers and thinkers, movers and shakers across our Solís Policy Institute alum network have the resources they need to build our shared feminist future.
When we center girls and gender-expansive youth from the start, it changes the outcome of our work together.