Aviva Community Fund provided £600 of match funding
The Super Project (Sustainable Periods)
Nottingham, England, United Kingdom
Aim
We want to increase access to reusable sanitary wear to the most vulnerable in our community and reduce period poverty.
Tiger have been running recycling related textiles workshops in our local community for around 5 years now. One question that came up a lot in workshops was "Can you show us how to make reusable sanitary wear?".
From this Toni and the team began to work on researching materials, patterns, prototypes and samples which were trialled in some workshops. Feedback was brilliant with members of our community saying how much switching to reusable sanitary wear changed their lives.
Then COVID hit, and as a community organisation our focus moved away from this to focus on the most urgent response needed in the pandemic (masks and scrubs for frontline workers). Despite this, Toni kept working whenever she had a spare moment, in addition to this, Marielle came on board and started doing research into period poverty in the UK and issues surrounding disposable sanitary wear and what initiatives were already existing in the UK.
We were shocked, not only by the rate of period poverty in the UK, but also by the fact it grew by a third in the first lockdown alone.
In response to this we started to develop the SuPer Project in much more detail to create a project which supports people switching over to reusable sanitary wear AND improves access to sustainable solutions to the most vulnerable in our community. Often the biggest barrier to reusable sanitary wear is the initial cost compared to disposables (even though it saves money in the long run.)
So why do we need your help?
Our aim is to sell reusable sanitary wear on a buy one give one scheme, which should provide this project longevity and help us support as many people as possible on their switch to reusable. Our hope is that we can eventually start to distribute free of charge through food banks and community groups to target those most in need. However, we need your help with the initial cost of supplies to help us get started! We have set an initial target of £2000 but the more we raise the more fabric and supplies we can buy, the more we buy/make the more we can distribute to those in need, simple.
This project successfully funded on 14th July 2021