She was 14. She kept sneaking out at night. Starting fights. Breaking into cars. Getting arrested.

I'd been her lawyer for eleven months before she told me her parents were pimping her out at night. They were meth addicts. For her, being on the streets at night was safer than being at home. Even if it meant hanging with the wrong crowd and getting into trouble. I saw her at court yesterday. She's an adult now. Her path had been pre-determined. I felt a deep sense of sadness and despair at seeing her in the dock. Being the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff sucks.

So when people ask me why I went from being a lawyer to selling tampons, I say it's because I couldn't be a bystander any longer. Education is one of the few paths out of the dysfunctional world of young offenders. There are many barriers to them attending school. Most of them too complex for me to solve. But I decided if I could remove just one of those barriers, such as not having access to period products, then I was going to do it. 

A big thank you to my legal colleagues who supported Crimson and our tampon donations programme when it started in 2018. And something that doesn't suck - 107k tampons have been donated to date.  

 Nga Mahi,

Vic x