Who’s Seeing Red
In October 2022, Jonathon, the managing director of The Good Company (providing Epsom & Ewell Foodbank & Pantry), joined us at our club meeting and we discussed local needs. At our next club meeting the focus was on the impact of poverty on women & girls, especially when they need to buy period products. We started to think about how this could be addressed as a project. We submitted our idea to a regional Soroptimist competition ‘The Bluebell Awards’ and were delighted to be runners up and receive a small pot of money to get us started. We undertook a lot of research into the harms which can be caused by disposable products and developed a questionnaire which encouraged women to test their knowledge of the impacts on individuals and the environment. By giving women a copy of the answers we raised awareness of the issues. We developed a workshop which we presented to a group of women from Epsom Pantry and then to a group of Ukrainian women. At the end of each workshop we invited the women to be part of a pilot project trying out different reusable menstrual products which were purchased by us. We raised money to purchase items through organising two fashion shows and a Murder Mystery event. After about 4 months of use we invited them to give us feedback about the benefits and challenges of the items they had tested. It was clear that there were significant benefits of using the items, particularly the period pants. However the financial challenge for some women of purchasing the needed 6 pairs of pants may mean that it is unaffordable in the short term even if it has a financial benefit in the long term. After consultation with our sister club in Plymouth which has run a similar project, we have decided that we should seek to raise funds to provide specific groups of women in need with a starter pack of pants. We are currently planning how to achieve this goal.