THE WORLD celebrates International Women’s Day today. Over the last year, women in Bolton have fought to change attitudes in society. HELENA VESTY reports on how period poverty among young women and girls is being tackled in the town’s schools.

One campaigner from Bolton is leading the charge against period poverty — the term coined for when people do not have access to essential sanitary products during their period, because they cannot afford to buy them. 

She now supports 26 schools across the area with free sanitary towels and tampons after seeing that the need was urgent.

Lucy Edge, from Bromley Cross, is a volunteer organiser for The Red Box Project — a network ensuring that free menstrual products can be provided in schools. 

The community initiative works by inviting people to donate pads, tampons, tights and underwear to red boxes at donation points around town. The filled boxes are then delivered to schools in the area.

Ms Edge says that the response from schools crying out for help has been overwhelming, she said: “I got a massive influx of requests.

“I got about 40 messages from teachers and parents. Some teachers were saying they’ve got a lot of underprivileged girls. The teachers are often the ones footing the bill if that support isn’t in school.”

Ms Edge now sends products to 26 nearby schools, using donations from 17 collection points. She says that the boxes have been filled with “hundreds and hundreds, even thousands, of packets”, but she still has a waiting list of schools. 

Ms Edge says having towels and tampons accessible in schools is important for all and the project works on a “no questions asked” basis.

She said: “It’s not just for low income families, it’s for anybody who needs it. Everybody has been caught short at some point. 

“The products should be available in schools but school’s budgets are tight enough. They need to get help from the government.

“As much as we love running the project, we shouldn’t have to.”

The public health issue has long remained hidden as a result of decades of stigma and lacking education around menstruation.

Now, the wave of brave women sharing their horror stories has revealed just how many suffer the considerable monthly cost attached to the natural, unavoidable process.

In recent months, many women have spoken out about facing difficulties in affording sanitary products, being a child in a financially struggling family or on a limited wage as an adult. 

Common consequences include using socks and toilet roll to line underwear in desperation, along with girls missing days of school because they have no sanitary products to protect themselves throughout the day.

Recent research by Plan International UK found that one in ten women between 14 and 21 years of age had been unable to afford sanitary products. While 49 per cent of girls in the UK have missed a full day of school because of their periods.

Some campaigners are calling for tampons and pads to be subsidised or completely free, saying that menstrual care is a human right. 

By getting the problem into the headlines, major institutions are starting to acknowledge the need for sanitary products to be more accessible. 

This week alone, the government has announced a £2 million fund to end period poverty globally and a further £250,000 to tackle the problem in the UK.

The NHS also announced that patients in hospital who need sanitary protection will be offered free tampons and other products from this summer onward.