Women in our own Australian backyard are going without basic toiletries. Accessibility to simple items like deodorant, shampoo and soap prove challenging when the closest store can be up to 1000km away. Some communities are at the end of 750km of harsh, red dirt roads. Others can be cut off by flood waters for months at a time. Some are only accessible via boat or plane. Some communities may be lucky enough to have a small store, but the prices of basic items are exuberant.
Run by a network of volunteer coordinators situated in over 40 remote Australian communities, a Happy Box is a collection of toiletries and beauty products put together with care, and sent to an Indigenous woman in a remote community. It may include essential items such as shampoo, soap, deodorant, pads, tampons, and toothpaste or luxury self-care items such as make up, body scrub, face masks, journals candles, and hair accessories. The Happy Boxes Project collects and distributes these boxes to the Happy Box coordinators, with donations from individuals and businesses. They want to send as many Happy Boxes filled with self care products as possible. To provide women, regardless of their location and situation, the enjoyment of life’s little luxuries that we regularly take for granted.
Matriarchs are the backbone of our communities, Mothers, Sisters, Aunties, Grandmothers; all trying to support their families in adverse circumstances, quite often pouring from an empty cup. If just one Happy Box can fill one person’s cup, then what we do is more than worthwhile.
You can help by creating a subscription or purchasing a one-off donation here, which supplies The Happy Boxes Project and the women they support with the dignity of sanitary products.