I am from a group of young people who recently completed our NCS programme in Darlington and are wanting to spread awareness of period poverty and support local groups in fighting this cause. We have teamed up with local foodbanks and are working on a partnership with supermarkets in Darlington to create boxes similar to those you see for foodbanks.
Within our boxes we are aiming to collect hygiene and sanitary products that will be collected and stored by the King’s Church foodbank, they can then be distributed to different locations. These locations would include schools (if they require more products after RedBox Project stopped providing products), refuges (like the ones housing people who came from Afghanistan) and different foodbanks who have a shortage of our collected products. The goal isn’t to stop period poverty, as it’s a difficult situation to beat, but to reduce the number of women and young girls who can’t afford necessary products for themselves.
Around Darlington town centre shops have been raising awareness of our campaign by putting posters up within their stores that has a link to our social media (@darlingtonperiodpoverty on Instagram) and statistics linked directly to period poverty that really opens the eyes of readers to a problem they didn’t know existed. Our campaign tag is #NCSdarloperiodpoverty and we hope to spread awareness and contribute to reducing a problem that’s on a global scale.
Member of the darlingtonperiodpoverty campaign