The founder of a major campaign has called for the final push to make Sheffield a Period Positive city through working with schools and small businesses.
Chella Quint started Period Positive and has done work with nearly every secondary school in Sheffield over the past 10 years sharing inclusive ways to challenge period shame.
The grassroots project aims to announce that Sheffield is a Period Positive city on May 20th as part of the Festival of Debate.
Chella said: “If you give a girl a tampon she can bleed for a day, if you teach a school how to be Period Positive they can dismantle the patriarchy.
“It takes a long time to turn a ship and the council is a big ship that has had a lot of distractions and it’s just really exciting that it’s happening now.”
Chella has been working with the council’s Period Equality Charter which wants to make Sheffield the pioneer to eradicate period poverty in the UK and destigmatize periods as a taboo.
Period Positive aims to make the Period Equality Charter as inclusive as possible.
She said: “All genders of people have a stake in periods and in some ways it would be nice to focus on the umbrella issues of menstrual literacy because the more we know the more equal period talk is.
“Period equality tends to focus on lots of different elements but menstrual literacy brings it all together.”
Menstrual Literacy is the way in which individuals gain knowledge about menstruation through language, biological facts and the way they care for their period.
The Period Positive framework is made up of 20 pledges and aims to advocate for menstrual education across the curriculum rather than just teaching it in PSHE or Science lessons.
Chella has been working on the Period Positive National Curriculum model and is submitting it to the Education Select Committee in April with an open letter from pupils who have participated in Period Positive work.
Lily Jordan, 19, from Sheffield, had extremely painful periods during her early teens causing her to miss out on school time. She said: “I think it’s important because growing up in my hometown periods weren’t spoken about enough so something like this for younger girls is amazing just to normalize it.”
A Period Equality Charter joins up multi agency work from schools and small businesses which will then help justify funding and training into more education about menstruation.
Chella added: “If everyone in between got on board from head teachers to lollipop ladies and even the parent school governors, you’ve got it going.”
This week sees the final push on local sign ups for schools to gain the Period Positive badge challenge, you can sign up or nominate here.