Aarushi Khanna

I started my advocacy journey when I was young, beginning to volunteer at a very early age. I've always been passionate about creating change and serving my communities. In high school, I started getting into filmmaking as another way of advocacy and storytelling, which is super important to me. I made films with a student team on various issues from social justice movements to climate change, and I had the opportunity to work with a director from the UK remotely to do a film on climate change and how it impacts women around the world. I learned about period poverty as an issue in high school and never realized how big of a deal it is because it was never talked about. Reflecting on my own experiences, I came to understand that we didn't really talk about it in schools as much either, and in a lot of cultures, it's a very stigmatized topic. That made me even more passionate to want to change the way we go about it and the conversations that we have. I began my work with local projects like donation drives and community events, but during college I expanded and worked with a delegate to pass a bill in Virginia, HB 1221, which allows for the expansion of peer education in schools. Currently, I'm working on creating new curriculum for schools across Virginia with the Virginia Department of Education, bringing real, tangible change to schools across my state. I lead my nonprofit, Sincerely People with Periods, where we do community events and advocacy, distribute products locally, and teach students from elementary to high school ages on period education as we develop this curriculum so we can test out what works and what's needed and incorporate what our community deserves in the comprehensive curriculum. I'm also working on bringing new legislation in the upcoming year. As I've worked in healthcare as a patient care tech, I've noticed that a lot of my patients speak primarily only Spanish, so I've been trying to teach myself Spanish to advocate better for them and potentially communicate with them in the future, since I know that can be a barrier.