Yanique Brandford
Twenty-three-year-old Jamaican student, Yanique Brandford, has been named among seven individuals to receive the Country Hero Award from international advocacy organization - Global Citizen, for their work as social activists in their home countries and elsewhere across the world.
Brandford is the founder of Help A Girl Out (HAGO), a non-profit organisation that focuses on reducing period poverty and eliminating stigma associated with menstruation, and is the first-ever recipient of Canada’s Hero Award.
“Being awarded with this year’s Canada’s Hero Award is a monumental honour for me personally, as well as for HAGO and the menstrual equity movement here in Canada,” Brandford said. “This award not only will open doors for conversations around the issue of period poverty, but will also allow HAGO to further impact the lives of young women who are victims of menstrual stigma,” she noted in a release from Global Citizen.