Period Friendly Places Charity Trustees Report 2022
Introduction:
Period poverty is an issue affecting women and girls who don't have access to safe, hygienic sanitary products due to financial or accessibility constraints. As part of Bristol’s One City approach, a city-wide commitment was made in 2019 to work towards eradicating period poverty, promoting period dignity for women and making Bristol a Period Friendly City.
In 2020, Period Friendly Bristol developed from a One City initiative into a registered charity which focuses on two keys areas: establishing and maintaining a donation and distribution network for menstrual products across four different wards in the city and tackling period stigma through education.
Bristol has the third highest rate of period poverty across England, Scotland, and Wales. More than two in five women and girls in Bristol (41.2%) have been affected by an inability to afford menstrual products while the national average is 27%. The negative impacts of period poverty are also far-reaching, with the effects clearly seen in education as a lack of access to menstrual health products exacerbates social and educational inequalities. Studies have shown that 140,000 girls and young women in the UK missed school in 2018 as they couldn’t afford period products. In Bristol alone, 40% of students have missed school due to difficulties accessing period products.
Bristol has pledged to take a leading role in eradicating period poverty by making period products available to all who need them through the distribution network, while also combating outdated societal attitudes to menstruation. The Period Friendly Bristol vision is to eradicate period poverty and to be a city of period dignity, in which nobody is held back in life or stigmatised against simply for having a period.
Tackling period stigma
Period Friendly Bristol has placed a key focus on combatting the current stigma around menstruation by starting at an educational level within schools. The Real Period Project and City to Sea have together developed an educational package, which has been offered to all schools in Bristol as an additional element to the national roll-out of Personal, Social, Health
and Economic (PSHE) Education as a school curriculum subject in 2020, and the UK government’s provision of period products within schools.
The programme not only encourages the de-stigmatisation of the conversation about menstruation, but also seeks to educate on the sustainable menstrual products available to those who have periods. The training sessions were comprised of two parts. In the morning Period Friendly Schools focused on how to make schools period friendly, and the afternoon was run by Rethink Periods, who gave guidance on lesson plans and teaching about periods.
All scheduled training sessions were run in person until February 2020 and upon the introduction of COVID restrictions, City To Sea ran one more training session online. These five training sessions saw the involvement of 22 primary schools, 8 secondary schools, 3 independent schools and 4 out-of-school providers including special schools, PRUs and the hospital education team. The programme was delivered to 53 teachers and 26 school nurses in total.
To ensure young people’s voices were involved in the education programme, a video was created by Bristol based production company Plimsoll Productions, which featured Youth Councillors discussing their experiences and views on period stigma. This video was shared on social media to encourage young people to fill out a survey, the results of which were incorporated into the education package. The video has received over 2,000 views and the survey has been filled out by over 200 young people. Their input is invaluable in the discussions surrounding policy and change in the city.
Distribution and donation network
The network of donation and distribution points for period products has been operating across Bristol since 2019. This has provided free access to period products for anyone who needs them throughout the city. A web app has been produced by volunteer web developers at a weekend hackathon coordinated by Bristol Open Data. The app tells people in Bristol where they can donate, and where the collection points are should they need to use them. These collection points are hosted in a variety of community accessible locations including libraries, museums, surgeries and community centres.
The scheme has partnered with four corporate sponsors; Hargreaves Lansdown, Burges Salmon, WSP and Jacobs Engineering, who have each committed to hosting collection points and moving products across the city to their designated distribution hubs centred in the areas with the most need. Efforts have been made by the corporate partners to redistribute surplus menstrual products from foodbanks in Bristol to the collection points.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of the distribution hubs closed for the majority of 2020 but this has since changed. Period Friendly
Places output, supply and distribution was reduced throughout this time and operations have been quiet. As things have opened up again we are making contact with collection points to re-establish their willingness for involvement in the scheme. We hope to continue to revive and grow our operations over 2022-23.
The next steps:
Period Friendly Places will continue to improve and expand as a charity to educate and influence the culture around menstruation within Bristol. The donation and distribution network will continue to grow as the lockdown restrictions are alleviated, and the education programme will be extended to more schools within the Bristol area when possible. Discussions have been raised regarding the creation of a GIS model to assist in creating a targeted method of allocation to more effectively distribute specific types of products to distribution centres when required.
The success of the programme means that national partners will soon be working with Bristol to develop an easily replicable action plan to promote the model to other cities in the United Kingdom. International cities including Los Angeles have also expressed interest in adopting Bristol’s Period Friendly Places model.
Period Friendly Places
1192211
Receipts and payments accounts
06.11.2020 05.04.2022
For the period from
To
Section A Receipts and payments
Unrestricted Restricted Endowment Total funds funds funds funds
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to the nearest £
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A1 Receipts
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A6 Cash funds last year end - - - 7,712
Cash funds this year end - - - 7,712
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Section B Statement of assets and liabilities at the end of the period
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| Categories | Details | funds | funds | ||
| B1 Cash funds | Total cash funds | to nearest £ - - - 7,712 |
to nearest £ - - - - |
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| (agree balances with receipts and payments account(s)) |
Agreement Error | OK | |||
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| funds | funds | ||||
| B2 Other monetary assets | Details | to nearest £ - - - - - - |
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| B4 Assets retained for the | Details | Fund to which asset belongs |
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| B5 Liabilities | Details | Fund to which liability relates |
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| Signed by one or two trustees on behalf of all the trustees |
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| Adam Bradley | Adam Bradley | ||||
| Craig Cheney | Craig Cheney |
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CC16a
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Last year
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to the nearest £
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Endowment funds to nearest £ - - - - - - Current value (optional) - - - - - Current value (optional) - - - - - - - - - When due (optional) Date of approval 6/2/2023 6/2/2023