Green Gown Awards 2021: Student Engagement - Dundee and Angus College - Finalist

Period Positive

Dundee and Angus College’s (D&A) ‘Period Positive’ campaign is driven by the need to end period poverty in a sustainable and inclusive fashion. In our college alone, hundreds of youngsters face the tyranny of coping with the physical and economic demands of menstruation. Not content to simply offer period products in the toilets, we have used our portion of government funding to develop and deliver a truly dynamic and ambitious campaign to turn period poverty into Period Positive!

Since first receiving funding to support this work in the 2018/19 academic year, D&A has made it a focus to not only educate about periods, but also the financial and environmental impacts of products on the market. By bringing in specialist speakers from healthcare and our sustainable partner agencies, to better inform our students and staff, we witnessed a huge shift in behaviour change with people requesting re-usable products.

Top 3 learnings:

1. We learnt that with an open, sustainable, and inclusive approach, period poverty can be tackled effectively.
2. Period poverty is widespread and has a far greater impact than we realised.
3. Tackling period poverty with sustainable solutions not only helps the planet, it makes it more cost effective too.