Tag: campaign

Everyone deserves a bloody good period

Gabby Edlin is the founder and CEO of Bloody Good Period, an organisation supplying asylum seeker drop-in centres with menstrual products.

No doubt you are already reaching deep into your cavernous pockets to fetch your card and donate to this incredible lady’s organisation, which you can do RIGHT HERE.

Back to the blog!

together, we can eliminate period poverty

In 2016, Gabby began volunteering at a drop-in centre for asylum seekers and refugees. After reading a Maya Oppenheim article on period poverty among women experiencing homelessness, Gabby raised the issue of sanitary products in the centre. She learnt that menstrual products, a necessity for half of the population on a monthly basis, were classed as “emergency” items, to be given out only to those who really needed them.

Recognising that all menstruating people really need menstrual products, Gabby began asking friends to donate sanitary products for her to take to the centre on Facebook. This was the beginning of Bloody Good Period.

WHAT IS PERIOD POVERTY?

In May this year, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty described poverty in the UK as “systematic” and “tragic”. The report showed a fifth of the UK’s population, some 14 million people, living in poverty, with 1.5 million people experiencing “destitution”, meaning that they had less than £10 a day after housing costs, or that they had to go without at least two essentials such as shelter, food, heat, light, clothing or toiletries during a one-month period.

Period poverty refers to having a lack of access to sanitary products due to financial constraints. Surveys have found that somewhere between one in four to one in 10 women and girls in the UK have experienced period poverty, with one survey finding that over a quarter of those experiencing period poverty had missed school or work as a result.

While period poverty can affect women of any background, certain groups are more likely to be affected. These include women experiencing homelessness, asylum seekers and refugees.

A SUSTAINABLE FLOW
OF MENSTRUAL PROTECTION FOR THOSE WHO CAN’T AFFORD IT

Bloody Good Period now supplies 25 asylum seeker drop-in centres based in London and Leeds. The organisation also directs regional collections to other food banks and centres in the UK. To anyone coming to one of their drop-ins, their products are available to take away without without judgement, prejudice or charge. Bloody Good Period is also cognisant of temporary intensive relief efforts, supply around 1500 packs of pads to survivors of the Grenfell fire disaster in June 2017.