#FreePeriods

In 2017, 18 year old Amika George read research that 1 in 10 young people in the UK could not afford period products and were regularly missing school and work during their bleed. This sparked her to create the #FreePeriods petition to lobby the government to provide free menstrual products to schools and local community centers, which evolved into thousands of people marching around Parliament Square in December of that year as part of the first national ‘Pink Protest’.

The campaign successfully got free menstrual products openly supplied to schools and local community centers across England who register for them, and has now seen Wales (2020) and Northern Ireland (from September 2021) agree to similar schemes. In November 2020, Scotland took this one step further and became the first country in the world to make period products free for all.

(Image caption)Photograph from the Pink Protest march in London, December 2017. Image: Amelia Allen