May 6, 2021
by Marielle Newton
To say this project has been a long journey may be an understatement. My first big project for Tiger has been slowly blossoming for a few years now, and here we are about to launch. This is really a passion project for both myself and Toni, so both nerves and tensions are high for its success.
I have a professional blurb that explains this project, but I feel the best way to express the passion that created this project is to just start at the beginning.
As a CIC it’s always at the forefront of our minds to respond to the needs of our community and during workshops one question that came up often was the idea of making reusable menstrual pads. From this Toni began researching design, playing with patterns and making prototypes. She launched a few workshops to test the idea and feedback was pretty great. However, before we could take the project any further COVID hit and the immediate needs of our community changed. For almost a year our key focus became For The Love of Scrubs and supporting the frontline. Throughout this time reusable pads stayed in the back of our minds and we did research whenever we had a spare chance.
From this research we found that period poverty in the UK had risen by a third in the UK since the start of the pandemic. It was hard to get my mind around the fact that in this day and age something as basic as period care was still such a prominent issue in the UK, yet we rarely hear about it in the mainstream media.
Although there are some brilliant organisations trying to help the issue, many either focused on disposable period products, which are not financially or environmentally sustainable, or international period poverty. Yet it seems like such a perfect solution, using reusable menstrual products not only supports in the short term, but it massively reduces costs and environmental impact in the long run. Making the most vulnerable in our society more resilient against period poverty.
The main thing standing in the way of switching to reusable menstrual products is the initial cost. We realised that one way we could overcome this was to run a Buy One Give One scheme similar to the one we run for our facemasks. By providing free of charge to vulnerable people we are not only combatting period poverty but breaking down the barrier to a more sustainable way of living.
Our volunteer sewers are just starting to get their teeth into this project and we will be ready to distribute our free period pads in the summer once we’ve had a chance to build up a good stock. In the mean time, we are starting to upload sanitary wear to our online store which you can find here: www.tigercommunitystore.co.uk.
If you want to support our cause to improve access to reusable menstrual products you can donate to our crowdfunding campaign here:
Www.Avivacommunityfund.co.uk/super
We are always looking for volunteers who want to help with the project, follow us on Facebook to get involved: