Mar 28, 2021
In this episode, I interview Jacinta Gulasekharam, the Co-Founder of Dignity New Zealand (NZ), a social enterprise with a mission to deliver period equity and has created access to 32,000 sustainable period products. Dignity operates a “Buy one, give one” model for period products where corporate partners provide sanitary items in bathrooms, and Dignity NZ donates the equivalent number of boxes to those without access to them. To date, Dignity has donated more than 29,000 boxes of period products to 130+ schools, youth organizations, and women’s support groups across New Zealand, supporting over 37,000 women.
Jacinta led the Positive Periods campaign which resulted in the government committing to free period products for students in NZ. She’s the Partnership Manager at FlexiTime, supporting their partners and enterprise clients. She’s a First Foundation mentor and lends her experience to grow the startup ecosystem. She’s also an Edmund Hillary Fellow, Women of Influence Young Leader Finalist 2018 and 2020, and Sustainable Business Network Change Maker Finalist 2020.
Jacinta and her Co-Founder launched Dignity in February 2017 when they were just 21 after they came up with the idea for the social enterprise the year before while at a business boot camp. In the beginning, they were the only part-time employees as they worked in other full-time jobs but eventually, they hired two part-time employees. Later on, Jacinta took on the role of general manager full-time for six months and then hired someone else to take on the role. Jacinta believes that the hardest thing in growing a small business is believing in yourself and being the person that has to lead and take charge and that the one thing she would tell herself on day one of starting out in business is, “Believe in yourself and go for it” Join me and Jacinta as we dive into her impactful small business ownership journey.
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Music from https://filmmusic.io
"Cold Funk" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com). License: CC
BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/