News

This is the first A.G.M. for our charity, Period Power, and we have had an extremely busy couple of years since our inception as a charitable organisation in September 2017. Over this period we have supplied 110 Foodbanks and charities and over 220 schools and colleges with sanitary products. We have been instrumental in the rolling out of period dignity toilets within the area of Stoke-on-Trent with all the Council owned ladies’ and disabled toilets now having sanitary products placed for the use of public and staff. We also held a very successful conference in June 2019 at the New Vic Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent and ended 2019 with a Campaign of the Year award from the Midlands T.U.C. held at Aston Villa Football Ground.

During the last 18 months we have been working with local schools and have involved them in workshops in order to raise awareness of period poverty and also to encourage young girls to talk openly about menstruation and their feelings about this. We are hoping to continue our work with local schools and to raise awareness of the alternative products which are now available such as reusable pads and menstrual cups.

Our conference for 2020 is scheduled for October and will focus on issues such as the environment and reusable products. We will also be working more locally with young women and girls on these issues but also to empower them so that they can go into their communities and talk with their peer groups on the issues raised.

During the last couple of years we have won funding from the Tesco Bags of Help campaign, The Ardonagh Trust, the Safer Communities CIC Funding and the Tampon Tax Fund, all of which has helped enormously.

During the time that we have been in operation we have delivered approximately 35,000 packs of pads and tampons to the women and girls in our communities and we are in a good position to continue this support.

We are looking forward to a very busy year and to hopefully be in a position to reach further afield to other areas. We can only see the demands on our services grow but we are determined to continue with our work until we are no longer needed.

Linda Allbutt, Chair and Founder.

This will be the last post of 2019 and wouldn’t it be wonderful

if this was to be the last ever. However, I really don’t see how

that will happen for the foreseeable future.

Since the election we now have a number of different MPs

and we will be contacting all of the MPs who have

constituencies in the areas we work to ask for their support

and to make sure that the Chancellor will not renege on the

promise made to supply all of our schools and colleges with

sanitary products. We will keep you informed of any

progress made but………

2019 has been an extremely busy year for Period Power and

it would not have been possible to reach out and help all the

groups who have asked for help without our fab volunteers.

We now supply over 120 Foodbanks and charities and over

200 schools in the Staffordshire, West Midlands and Cheshire

areas.

To continue with this work we will always need the support

of as many people and organisations as possible so if any of

you have a little spare cash and don’t know what to do with

it………you know what I mean.

2019 has also brought us our first accolade. We were

awarded the Campaign of the Year Award by the Midlands

TUC and to say that we are proud of this is a massive

understatement.

We wish you all a truly wonderful Christmas and a peaceful

and prosperous New Year and once again, thank you for

your interest and support.

See you next year. xx

We are incredibly lucky and proud to have the following women who volunteer for us. Without their support we would struggle to deliver sanitary products as widely as we do.

We offer our heartfelt thanks to them.

Shahin Akhtar

Sharon Guy

Cheryl Rawlings

Birgit Allport

Janet Sutton

Annemarie Hawley

Hannah Stewart

Dawn Hanson

Jen Ermoyenous

Bernadette Kelly

Since my last blog we have been so busy that there are barely
enough hours in a day.
We are now into a new school term and our main task for
the next few weeks is to get stock into our Primary and High
Schools (over 190). As you may be aware, our previous
Chancellor made a statement in the House of Commons saying
that from September, 2019 all high schools would be supplied
with sanitary products so that all girls would get full access to
education and not have to take time off if they could not afford
the necessary protection. However, things have changed and
primary schools have now been included in this promise but the
roll out has now been delayed until January 2020.
We, at Period Power, will continue to support all of our local
schools until this promise has been fulfilled.
We will be watching the current Chancellor and any future
Chancellors to make sure that this promise is not reneged on.

We are also working very closely with a number of groups to
encourage as many employers to be Period Dignity employers
and to place pads and tampons in all of their staff toilets.
We feel that sanitary products in toilets should be as commonplace
as soap and toilet paper. As has often been said on our Facebook
page……If men had periods then they would be in every public
and staff toilet in the country.

Maybe you could do your bit by encouraging your employer to
be a Period Dignity employer.

Speak soon.

OK I hold my hands up. I haven’t done a blog for quite some time
so, I can only say sorry. However, we have been so very busy with
the growing demands on our help.

We are now supplying over 90 charities and foodbanks and over
180 schools and colleges. Luckily, we are still getting the amazing
support from our followers so I can only say thank you to each and
every one of you who have donated to our fight to eradicate period
poverty, at least in our local area. We are constantly being asked to
have stands at various conferences and to talk to a growing number
of organisations, so busy times.

However, much of our time recently has been spent on organising
the first period poverty conference in the West Midlands.
This took place on 6th June at the New Vic Theatre in Stoke-on-Trent
and was hosted jointly with New Vic Borderlines.
I have to be totally honest and say that I was extremely nervous
about hosting this event and spent many a sleepless night thinking
about all the things that could go wrong. I needn’t have worried.
We had the most amazing day and were supported by many, many
people. We were extremely lucky to have the support of three local
schools whose girls gave wonderful and truly inspiring performances.
These were Trentham Academy, Sir Thomas Boughey and The
Coppice Academy, all schools in the Newcastle and Stoke-on-Trent
areas.

The feedback from people who attended could not have been more
favourable and everyone had a wonderful and informative day.
There are many, many photographs on our Facebook page so please
check them out.

Please keep checking us out on our social media pages and please
keep on raising awareness of this iniquitous plight which many of
our sisters are faced with.

Speak soon.

Linda

Again, it’s been a very busy few weeks. The roll out of delivering to primary schools has taken up a lot of time so I’m incredibly grateful that we have some really great volunteers. Massive thanks to Shaz, Cheryl, Annemarie and Hannah for helping to get these deliveries out within a very short time.

We have started to supply the schools in Rugeley, and Hannah has been busy delivering to these while Annemarie is helping with deliveries in the Newcastle area. As usual, Shaz has been busy delivering in the Walsall area.

Once all the schools have received their first deliveries we will have supplied 118 primary schools in the Staffordshire area together with the 46 high schools which we have been supplying over the last twelve months.

Hopefully now that the Chancellor has pledged to supply all high schools with menstrual products we will be able to move into other areas with the roll out for primary schools. However, I fear that there may be caveats attached to this pledge and I would like to see this pledge rolled out to all primary schools also.

Let’s wait and see and my message to all of the high schools which we supply is that we will always be here to support you and that there are never any caveats attached to our support.

Since my last blog we have been covered on BBC Midlands Today and from this coverage we have been contacted by many groups asking for our help and many others offering their support so all in all it’s been a very busy few weeks.

Looking ahead, we are in the process of organising a Period Poverty Conference in Stoke-on-Trent on 6th June and I will be letting you know more about this at a later stage. This has been made possible due to funding from the Tampon Tax Fund and we will be working with New Vic Borderlines in Stoke-on-Trent and hopefully it will be a great success.

One last point. I saw a post on Facebook recently saying that we should stop using the terms sanitary products, women’s hygiene products and other similar terms as these suggest something that is unsanitary and unhygienic. Menstruation is a very normal bodily function and should not be considered unsanitary in anyway. From now I will (hopefully) remember to call these products menstrual products. If I forget please feel free to call me out.

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/black-country/young-girls-missing-school-time-15900735

video to follow

Apart from the hundreds of individual donations, which have been truly humbling, we have also been very fortunate to receive a number of very welcome donations from Unions and Councillors.

All of these donations have made it possible for us to provide support for women and girls even further afield than we initially anticipated and we have been able to support other groups with the same aims in other areas.

However, the bulk of our support is still based in North Staffordshire and our latest campaign #AllOurSchools is taking a big percentage of our funding and would not have been possible without the larger donations.

The following have made very generous donations and, along with our individual donors who are too numerous to mention, we thank you all.

Union support:

F.B.U. No.7 Region

Trades Council, Stoke-on-Trent

Stoke N.E.U (N.U.T Section)

Unite the Union, Stoke-on-Trent

Unite the Union, West Midlands

Unite Community, Stoke-on-Trent

Unison Four Seasons Huntercombe, West Midlands Branch

Unison, Stoke-on-Trent

Unite the Union, Staffordshire Area Health Branch

Unite Community Leicester

Unite Bradford 2 Branch

Unison, City of Stoke-on-Trent, Local Government Branch

Unison Staffordshire

GMB West Midlands

GMB Birmingham

GMB Wellington Branch

CWU Midlands No1 Branch

DWP staff Walsall

FBU Women’s Conference

NUM

NEU Sandwell

Unite Cannock

Unite Babcock DSG Donnington

Unite 5/175

Unite Community Shropshire

Unite Rolls-Royce Coventry

Unite West Midlands 5107

Ucatt UE329 Birmingham Central

Unite Worcestershire & Herefordshire

Unite Birmingham South

Unite Black Country URM branch

Unite WM/7015 Local Authority Branch

Unite WM/7683 Branch

Unite WM/7687 Jaguar Land Rover, Castle Bromwich Branch

Unite Retired Branch 5206

Unite Branch WM 6050 C&W Local Tom Mann Branch

Unite WM/URM Branch 5202

Staffordshire Community Health Branch – Unison

Unite WM 6803 Coventry and Warwickshire Health Branch

Unite Community Nottingham

Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) Uttoxeter and Burton

HaHo Hartshill and Harpfields Occasions

Unison Midlands Probation Service

CWU Midlands Region

Unite Nottinghamshire Health Branch

Businesses:

Steelite International

Others:

Cannock Council HR dress down day

Stoke-on-Trent City Councillors:

Candi Chetwynd

Shaun Bennett

Ally Simcock

Ruth Rosenau

Chris Robinson

Shaun Pender

Andy Platt

Sheila Pitt

Joy Garner

Jackie Barnes

Alan Dutton

Stafford Borough Council

Jeremy Pert