Following the positive feedback as a result of our club’s involvement with the On The Ball initiative earlier in the season, West are happy to announce a partnership with Every Month for our forthcoming home fixture against 1874 Northwich. Over the past few seasons, our fans have been able to provide assistance to local food banks such as Barakah Food Aid, Reach Out to the Community, and the Chorlton & West Didsbury Trussell Trust – and we’re honoured to be running a similar scheme to try to help fight period poverty in our region, as well as taking steps to attempt to end the stigma around menstruation.
Every Month believe that menstrual products are essential, and should not be a luxury good – sentiments that we as a club wholeheartedly agree with. To that end, we will be collecting donations at our game on September 22nd – any contribution (either monetary or material) will be rewarded with a raffle ticket. If you or your business would like to contribute a prize – no matter how large or small – we’d be honoured to accept them, hopefully helping drive further donations to a vital organisation. Please fill out our form below, and a member of our team will get back to you as soon as possible. From next week, we’ll be announcing our prizes – which are already set to include West shirts, merchandise, and tickets – with the draw itself due to take place on the day of the game itself. We had originally planned to run the event over the course of an entire weekend, but with West Women & Development both now away on the Sunday, we’ll be running a separate event later in the season – as well as another initiatives aimed at assisting our local community in increasingly difficult times.
If you have any prizes to contribute to the raffle, please get in touch here – further information follows below:
As featured in the Manchester Evening News amongst others, Every Month is an organisation that aims to make menstrual products available to anyone and everyone who needs them. While their long term goal is to put the onus of this upon the government, at the moment their focus is to get sanitary items to those who, for whatever reason, are unable to otherwise obtain them. They do so by putting together period packs containing necessary items, and distributing them to food banks. Currently, the campaign is run exclusively in Manchester, but will soon be branching out to South London – and from there, hopefully even further afield. You can find out more about Every Month on their website, or follow them on social media: Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also contribute to their GoFundMe, or maybe attend their Bloody Big Brunch
Period poverty is a society wide problem that has a wide ranging impact: a 2017 study showed that one in ten women have been unable to afford sanitary wear at some point, while 12% have had to improvise due to affordability issues. The stigma around periods can also be an enormous hinderance, with almost half (48%) of 14-21 year olds saying they are embarrassed by their periods, and 71% saying they have similar feelings when buying sanitary products. Read more statistics on period poverty here.
