GABRIELLE PERRY

UNITED STATES, 29

Project: Girl Code Initiative
Pronouns: She/Her

Inspired by her family and her own experiences in the criminal justice system, Louisiana native and Tulane graduate Gabrielle Perry founded The Thurman Perry Foundation, named for her late father. The Thurman Perry Foundation’s Girl Code initiative addresses period poverty and preventative healthcare amongst incarcerated women and girls. To date, the initiative has donated 40,000+ organic menstrual products to incarcerated women across Louisiana. 

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How does the Girl Code initiative offer a new opportunity or perspective? 

The Thurman Perry Foundation believes in prioritizing, dignifying, and compensating women. The Thurman Perry Foundation is the only organization in the United States addressing menstrual health and period poverty amongst incarcerated women and girls directly inside correctional facilities. To tell the stories of these women, address this human rights issue, and do so from a public health perspective that offers preventative healthcare and free, tangible benefits to these impoverished women while educating them on their own bodies is a new frontier in the movement against mass incarceration.

“Once you come out as someone impacted by incarceration, that is a box you can never go back into, and it can lead to an unimaginable level of discrimination and abuse for women and girls specifically. We protect our community.”
Evan Wei-Haas