Our thanks to reporter Molly Priddy for highlighting our Gap Fillers Flathead mission.
The group’s initial goal is to wipe clean the school lunch debt within Kalispell’s School District 5, totaling about $16,000, as well as supply menstruation products for free in the girls bathrooms at Flathead High School. Overall, they hope to raise $76,000 to cover future project costs.
“We identified gaps where the public sector can’t fill the need and the private sector doesn’t have a mechanism,” said Tammi Fisher, a lawyer, former Kalispell mayor and one of the nonprofit’s founders. “We want to do it in Flathead County, all over the Flathead Valley at all of the high schools, and hopefully branch out to every other school district in the state.”
Fisher said the idea came to her after she heard a news item about girls not having products to help with their periods at schools. And if they did, the supplies were kept at the front desk or the nurse’s office, necessitating a conversation with multiple people to obtain them.