In the UK, asylum seekers receive a paltry £37 per week to live on. They are not allowed to work or to claim benefits. Many women seeking asylum have incredibly heavy periods due the trauma caused by displacement and, in some cases, are even injected with extra hormones to avoid rape on their passage to safety.

A heavy and irregular period could cost around £20 per month; that’s almost a quarter of an asylum seeker’s total income. Menstrual products are essential - and unlike toilet paper, are not free in public areas, leaving many to go without pads and tampons, using toilet paper, rags, socks, or nothing at all. It is intolerable that these women do not have access to the menstrual products they so desperately deserve.

Recognising the trauma and anxiety caused by not having access to essential menstrual products; Bloody Good Period’s vision is of a society in which asylum seekers, refugees and otherwise displaced people and their dependents have unrestricted access to high quality, free period supplies of their choice.

MENSTRUAL SUPPLIES ARE NOT CHEAP, BUT FOR ANYONE WITH A PERIOD, THEY ARE, OF COURSE, AN ABSOLUTE NECESSITY.

Sadly, the reality is that they're a luxury that many refugees and asylum seekers living in the UK cannot afford. Many people living in poverty resort to using toilet paper, old scraps of fabric or nothing at all.

Bloody Good Period was started by Gabby Edlin, who decided something needed to be done to create a sustainable flow (pun intended) of menstrual products for those who can't afford to buy them. What started as a whip-round on Facebook is now a growing enterprise with a vision to end period poverty.

Bloody Good Period supply 25 asylum seeker drop in centres based in London and Leeds, and their ambition is to supply many more food banks and drop-in centres across the UK, so that everybody has the right to a bloody good period!

All wording is from Bloody Good Period: https://www.bloodygoodperiod.com/

All funds raised from CWT staff will go directly to Bloody Good Period.