PHOTO: Volunteers load Dignity Grows' signature tote bags with hygiene supplies during a packing party at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Portland Sunday, Sept. 27, 2023. Dignity Grows will host a packing party at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center Sunday, Sept. 22. (Rockne Roll/Jewish Review file)

By ROCKNE ROLL
The Jewish Review
Dignity Grows, Portland’s Jewish community effort to combat period poverty, is back this fall with new leadership. 
Arielle Goranson has succeeded Bonnie Newman as Chair of Dignity Grows, a program of the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland’s Women’s Philanthropy. The group’s next packing party is set for Sunday, Sept. 22, at 1 pm at the Mittleman Jewish Community Center in Portland. This pack focused on a back-to-school theme and is partnering with the newly relaunched B’nai Tzedek program of the Oregon Jewish Community Foundation. Goranson is working to bring in other youth organizations in the community. 
“It felt like it was the right time and right opportunity to step in,” Goranson said of leading Dignity Grows. “So much of the foundation has been set, so many of the pieces are moving so seamlessly.”
Dignity Grows provides menstrual products and other hygiene supplies to health agency partners around the community in discrete, individual totes – supplies are donated and packed into totes by volunteers at packing parties like the one on Sept. 22, then picked up by partners and given to those in the community who need them most. Dignity Grows packed more than 2,000 totes in the last 12 months.
Goranson has a master’s degree in public health and her work has focused on maternal child health, so she brings a unique understanding of the issues that Dignity Grows is working to address.
“Think about stories of teen girls not being able to go to high school because of their period and their families can’t give them the supplies they need. So they just have to stay home, then they can’t go to college because they can’t graduate from high school,” she said. “It becomes this inequity, where groups who either don’t face this issue because they have enough resources or because they don’t menstruate, they keep going whole a whole group of people are left behind.”
The Oregon Menstrual Dignity Act made period products available and free in all Oregon public schools beginning in 2021, but these basic supplies may not be available at home. Goranson explained that a health education unit her sons took at school got her thinking about young people’s experiences with this issue and the opportunity an organization like Dignity Grows presents to help take a hands-on role in addressing a problem they’re in the midst of learning about. 
“This could be like a really cool opportunity for young people who are just learning about this to do community service and get a sense of what life is like for people either differently gendered or differently resourced than them,” she explained. “What do you do about such a huge issue? This is something tangible that they can do.”
Pre-registration is required for the Sept. 22 packing party and is available online at jewishportland.org/packingevent.