March 23, 2026
Provided Image/Manayunk Wingwomen
Brandy Deieso, pictured with her daughter in the front row, founded the Manayunk Wingwomen in 2021. The group holds a drive for menstruation and maternal care products in March.
For a fifth straight March, shops around Manayunk are displaying small, pink crates to collect donations of menstrual and maternal care products — from tampons and pads to diapers and pregnancy tests — to increase access to these supplies in the city.
The 29 women-owned businesses who are participating in this year's drive call themselves the Manayunk Wingwomen. They give the donations to local mutual aid nonprofit Grab-N-Flow, which has been encouraged by the growth of the annual campaign and is planning to open a new full-time dropoff location in the North Light Community Center next month.
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Anyone who donates to one of the Manayunk Wingwomen gets a free vinyl sticker of the coalition's logo, a maxi pad with its wings spread. Some businesses, like Main Street bistro Blondie, are even adding themed items to their menus and donating the proceeds to the nonprofit.
“It’s my favorite month of the year,” said Shelley Aragoncillo, founder of Grab-N-Flow. “It’s been so cool to see these businesses come together and the excitement of people dropping off products at a store.”
Grab-N-Flow was created in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when Aragoncillo found herself overly stocked with diapers, postpartum underwear and other supplies after giving birth to her son. During the mandated quarantines, she noticed an increased demand on social media for basic necessities like pads, tampons and baby food so she decided not to waste the resources she had. She installed a small shed on the side of her South Philly home to store the products and encouraged her neighbors to use the shed to take or donate supplies.
"The response I got back from the community was saying, 'We want to help,' and that's kind of what kept it going," Aragoncillo said. “It’s accessible 24/7 and completely anonymous. We don’t take information when people need stuff, they can just access it."
Across the Schuylkill River, Brandy Deieso, owner of Little Apple Gift Boutique on Manayunk’s Main Street, heard about the budding nonprofit and felt inspired to support the cause herself.
“I just thought it was so cool, impressive and impactful,” she said. “I, at the time, had a small baby myself and the idea of not having all the supplies that I would need to comfortably care for my child during such a vulnerable time just really spoke to me.”
Deieso began reaching out to female business owners around her block to gauge their interest in contributing to Grab-N-Flow’s stockpile for women's history month in March. What started as a word-of-mouth drive quickly became one of Aragoncillo’s most trusted resources, producing dozens of cases of donated products each year.
Women-owned businesses in Manayunk are displaying pink crates, like the one above, to collect donations.
Grab-N-Flow now has dropoff locations in three Philly libraries, and Aragoncillo said she has needed to rent out a storage unit for all of the overflow.
“The fact that I can rely on that drive happening every year has provided quite a bit of stability for me in terms of product and mental stability that we’re going to be able to continue to operate,” Aragoncillo said.
This year, Deieso and Aragoncillo worked with Kimberly Arroyo, executive director of the North Light Community Center, to set up a donation spot that will be open year-round at the Manayunk food pantry.
“While we are able to provide food to many families, essential hygiene products and diapers are often harder to secure,” Arroyo said in a statement. “This initiative helps close that gap by allowing neighbors to give and receive support anonymously and without barriers. Together, we are creating a space where basic needs are met with compassion and respect.”
In 2024, 1 in 4 teenagers and 1 in 3 adults in Pennsylvania struggled to purchase period products, and Black and Hispanic communities were disproportionately impacted, according to a memo released by members of the state House of Representatives.
Aragoncillo said due to the anonymous nature of her program, she has no way to know how many people rely on her organization at any given time, but she said she’s noticed that external factors like the baby formula shortage of 2022, federal funding cuts to SNAP benefits and increased immigration raids have increased the strain on her organization.
“Things like that have a really big impact because the money that they maybe had to spend on menstrual products or baby formula now has to go into just feeding themselves or their family,” Aragoncillo said. “We work with a few clinics who work with underinsured or undocumented folks to supply nursing pumps and things like that.
“... There’s a really cool community of people doing menstrual equity work in Philly, and I just want to be able to kind of make an impact in my community where I can.”
