Molly - Love Your Period Campaign
Molly Fenton, aged 19, from Cardiff, is a student who founded the ‘Love Your Period Campaign’ to end period poverty and stigma for school pupils across Wales. Molly launched the campaign two years ago at the age of 17, when trying to ensure her peers at school could access free period products, and realised that she wanted to do more to reduce stigma around talking about periods and to improve menstruation education.
Since then, Molly has led a series of projects including running homeless collections, donating reusable products for NHS staff during the pandemic, offering dedicated support for LGBTQIA+ people and setting up an advice line for parents as well as children. She is currently working with the Welsh Government on a period dignity strategic action plan, aiming to make menstrual products and services more accessible and erase period poverty by 2026.
Karina - The Homeless Period Belfast
Katrina McDonnell, from Belfast, founded ‘The Homeless Period Belfast’, a volunteer-led organisation working to alleviate the issue of period poverty in Northern Ireland, particularly among the homeless community. Katrina set up in the initiative in 2016 after learning about a similar scheme in the USA and realising how period poverty was amplified for people who are homeless.
Mobilising an army of volunteers, Katrina's project has distributed thousands of period care packs to a wide range of people in need, from rough sleepers and the homeless, to people who depend on food banks, refugees and asylum seekers to teenagers living in poverty and community youth groups. The initiative has successfully campaigned to have free period products offered in all schools in Northern Ireland, and Katrina has also formed a partnership with Lidl to offer a free box of sanitary pads or tampons per customer each month.
Laura and Julia - Sex Ed Matters
Campaigning gender equality twins Laura and Julia Coryton from Devon, co-founded 'Sex Ed Matters' to tackle sex and relationship taboos in UK schools, following Laura's ‘Stop Taxing Periods’ campaign, which saw the end of VAT charges on period products and millions of pounds of government funding distributed to the women’s charity sector. In 2014 Laura's activism began with an online petition to end the 5% tax rate that was applied to period products. Gaining over 320,000 signatures, Laura's campaign brought period poverty to global attention and highlighted gender inequalities in society.
Laura has continued to campaign on gender equality issues with her sister Julia, encouraging students to get involved in activism and working with universities and charities to distribute free period products and end the stigma around menstruation. 'Sex Ed Matters' works in more than 56 schools to empower relationship and sex education workshops, covering issues including periods, consent and LGBT+ rights. Read more on Laura and Julia's campaign.
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