Bloody Good Period is a registered charity which provides menstrual products to asylum seekers, refugees, and those who can’t afford or access them. We also provide menstrual and reproductive education to people who menstruate, and campaign to normalise periods.
How You Can Help
- Simply book your next holiday with Charitable Travel and tell us you want to support Bloody Good Period. The charity will then benefit from the free donation you can make as part of the booking process. To read more about how this works, head to our ‘About us‘ page.
- If you want to make a donation to Bloody Good Period and you are not booking a holiday, click here to visit their website.
- Visit bloodygoodperiod.com to sign up to newsletters, and follow the Bloody Good Period social media pages, and help spread the word.
How You Can Help
- Simply book your next holiday with Charitable Travel and tell us you want to support Bloody Good Period. The charity will then benefit from the free donation you can make as part of the booking process. To read more about how this works, head to our ‘About us‘ page.
- If you want to make a donation to Bloody Good Period and you are not booking a holiday, click here to visit their website.
- Visit bloodygoodperiod.com to sign up to newsletters, and follow the
Bloody Good Period social media pages, and help spread the word.
The Issue
Gabby Jahanshahi-Edlin founded Bloody Good Period when she realised that food banks and drop-in centres were not supplying menstrual products in the quantity or at the frequency that is required by a menstruator living in poverty (i.e every month), and most were not thinking to supply them at all.
“The stress of being a refugee has led to me having heavy and irregular periods: I don’t know anymore when I am going to bleed.”
Menstrual products are essential – and unlike toilet paper, are not free in public areas (or in GP clinics, like condoms). This forces many to go without pads and tampons, using toilet paper, rags, socks, or nothing at all.
The cost of living crisis, combined with the impacts of the pandemic and ongoing conflicts around the world, means that more people than ever desperately need period products. Bloody Good Period is currently experiencing an 80% increase in demand for products compared to this time last year.
Asylum seekers often live in extreme poverty. They are entitled to just £40.85 per week to live on, and are legally not allowed to work. Many report having heavy and irregular periods, thought to result from the trauma of displacement. A heavy and/or irregular period could cost around £20 per month, almost a quarter of an asylum seeker’s income. Asylum seekers are not offered any extra funding to purchase menstrual protection for themselves or their children.
If a person does not have access to menstrual products, their ability to go out in public is massively reduced, for fear of leaking. They can also develop infections or rashes from using inadequate products or homemade methods. People who menstruate also suffer from a culture of shame and embarrassment surrounding periods, which are completely normal and natural, meaning they are discouraged from speaking up and seeking support.
The Solution
By providing access to period products, we remove an obstacle that exists because an institutionally sexist society does not consider the needs of people who menstruate as essential.
Bloody Good Period work with more than 100 partners across England and Wales. They include organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers, charities for the homeless, food banks, Covid response community groups, and others. They place bulk orders with suppliers who deliver period products directly to our partners’ centres. From there, the products are given to the people who need them. These are long-term relationships, so products are guaranteed to be available every single bloody month.
BGP also works to eradicate the shame and stigma surrounding menstruation by encouraging the conversation around periods. We aim to normalise periods through our use of language, art and campaigns like the Walk of No Shame. We also run education workshops, including our fantastic Bloody Good Employers programme which aims to normalise menstruation in the workplace.
Periods don't stop in a pandemic
Bloody Good Period has distributed over 100,000 packs of period products since the start of UK lockdown in March 2020. Products have gone to refugees and asylum-seekers, food banks, community response groups, shelters for the homeless, those fleeing domestic violence, and in the early days of the pandemic, NHS frontline workers. With the pandemic continuing to push people into financial hardship and poverty, more and more people are forced to make impossible choices between these essentials and other items. With your support, we can make managing their periods easier for some of the UK’s most vulnerable people.
Get in touch
CEO: Rachel Grocott [email protected]
Bloody Good Period is a registered charity, number 1185849.
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