Making meaningful change for people who menstruate across Aotearoa

Jacinta Gulasekharam, Co-founder and Director of Dignity NZ, shares her story as a social entrepreneur and her mission to strive for period equity.

Making meaningful change for people who menstruate across Aotearoa

Jacinta Gulasekharam, Co-founder and Director of Dignity NZ, shares her story as a social entrepreneur and her mission to strive for period equity.

Entrepreneurship Postgraduate Undergraduate
15 Mar 2023

Jacinta Gulasekharam is the Co-founder and Director of Dignity NZ, founded with a mission to provide period products for all people without access. Here, she shares her story with us, and the steps it took to become a social entrepreneur. Over to you Jacinta...

I moved to Wellington from Feilding in 2014 to study a Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) majoring in Public Policy and Economics at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. I’ve always seen the parliamentary system as a place to create change for people and I wanted to study a degree that could provide me with great core business skills and effective ways of looking at solving super wicked problems.

Once a politics nerd, always a politics nerd, I did one of my high school projects on the infamous “NO” sign that Winston Peters held up and in my final year, I applied to be the youth member of parliament for Rangitīkei. I rewrote and edited my letter six times before finally sending it off to my local MP, Ian Mckelvie, and my very thorough editing paid off as my application was successful!

Going to Youth Parliament in Wellington and being amongst fellow politics nerds made me realise this was the place for me.

In 2016, after I finished my BCom, I attended the Victoria Entrepreneur Bootcamp organised by Wellington UniVentures (then VicLink) with a flatmate, Miranda Hitchings. We created Dignity, a social enterprise or for purpose business that provides period products to businesses with a Buy-One, Give-One model to support those without access. We have 104 corporate companies supporting their employees to have free access to products in the bathroom and we've given 40,000 products to community groups, support organisations, and schools across Aotearoa. This was a business we started in our student flat and we never could have expected it to support so many people.

I had been watching the growing wave of countries making period products free in schools in places like Wales and Scotland and was waiting to see someone start something similar here but no one did. I had a coffee with James Ranstead—president of the New Zealand Union of Student Associations (NZUSA) at the time—and he mentioned that he was going to be meeting with the then Minister for Education, Chris Hipkins. He agreed that if I put a paper together with the costings, impact data, and the policies from overseas we'd collected from Dignity, he would pass it on. He also said that Newshub were keen to do a story and that was the moment that I realised this needed to be something bigger, a campaign for others to get behind. That's how I ended up launching the Positive Periods campaign, a campaign for all young people to have a positive experience with their periods, live on the AM show.

I started a parliamentary petition to get individuals onboard which was presented to the then Minister for Women, Julie Anne Genter in November 2019. An important moment occurred when former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was asked about period poverty, and she said it was a personal priority for her. In June 2020 the Positive Periods working group sat down and talked about a national roll out.

It was surreal to think that this girl from Feilding was now sitting on the ninth floor of the Beehive.

If I had any advice, I would challenge everyone to back yourself and say yes to the opportunities that you come across. Everyone has the power for great things, and if at first you don't succeed - adjust your sails and never give up.

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey?

Inspired by Jacinta's story but need the tools to start your own social enterprise? Find out more about our Bachelor of Commerce, designed to give you the skills and knowledge you need to start your career in the exciting world of commerce.

Jacinta completed her Bachelor of Commerce (BCom) in 2016 and now works at PwC. She was a 2021 Wellbeing Impact Award winner, Women of Influence Young Leader Finalist 2019, and a Finalist for Young New Zealander of the Year 2022.