By Jess Matthews

From events to classes this is what we got up to in 2023!

In 2023 we got up to many different things. We thought we would give you all a summary of everything the SuPer project did in 2023. I want to preface this by saying thank you to the people who continued to support The SuPer Project because of you our buy one give one scheme was able to donate 222 reusable menstrual pads to people living in period poverty in 2023. So what did our 2023 look like?

International Women’s day at the Nottingham Council house

In March Mel attended International Women's day at the council house, talking to many people about the SuPer Project and giving away reusable menstrual pads giving people the ability to try our products risk free.

Nottinghamshire MPs Nadia Whittome and Lilian Greenwood visiting The SuPer Project at the Tiger Community Hub

In April Nottinghamshire MPs Nadia Whittome and Lilian Greenwood visited us at the Tiger Community hub, we spoke to them about who we are, what we do and what we are doing to help tackle period poverty. We also showed them a variety of our products and how they are made.

In May Lush Nottingham held a charity pot party for us (Mel was overjoyed at being in lush as she is a die hard Lush fan). They raised an amazing £348 for us, this helped us to provide even more reusable menstrual pads to people in Nottingham living in period poverty.

In June we attended the Ayup market in the market square. We were there for three days and got to talk to lots of people about all things periods and reusable menstrual products. We had a great time and spent most of the day feeling hungry with the smell of the delicious food being cooked on other stalls.

In July The SuPer project was busy! We started off the month with the Keyworth show and despite it being a very windy day we had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. We then attended the Wollaton arts festival, which was fabulous, the weather was great and there was brilliant live music that kept us entertained in between talking to everyone. Then we had Nottingham Pride! We all agree that pride was an awesome day, from talking to people about periods, to facepainting and joining the march we all had a SuPer time!

Then in August we were at Ikea Nottingham, we spent our day there talking to Ikea customers about The SuPer Project and period poverty. Mel and I are both self confessed Ikea fanatics so it was a very enjoyable day for both of us and we even rewarded ourselves with a look around Ikea after we had finished talking to people.

In September we got up to some more fun things. We started off with the Nottingham Green Festival, where we had a great day chatting to everyone and enjoying the sunshine. Then Mel was invited to BBC radio Nottingham and spoke about period poverty and The SuPer Project.

In October we ran a sew your own reusable menstrual products workshop at Shop Zero. We got to teach more people how to make their own products and talk to them about period poverty.

In November The SuPer Project attended the sustainability fair at Nottingham Trent University city campus. Here we got to talk to students and fellow attendees about reusable products and our mission.

Mel and Jess dropping off the donation for the Nottingham hygiene bank

To finish the year off in December we donated 25 packs (that 125 reusable menstrual pads) to the Nottingham hygiene bank who help support people struggling to afford menstrual products in Nottingham. This is our largest donation to date and was made possible by the buy one give one scheme. We plan on doing the same again in 2024.

25 packs of reusable menstrual pads donated to the Nottingham hygiene bank

There's a few more things I think I should mention about our year. We had our fabulous interns Debbie, Simran, Jade and Antonia who all worked hard to produce excellent work and conduct market research for us. We also moved out of the Tiger Community hub in December, the project is now run from our houses. But do not worry if you want to talk to someone about anything reusables or periods send us a message and we will connect with you that way.

Mel and Jess planning excting things for 2024

2023 was a great year for the project and we want to make 2024 even better. We are aiming to run more classes, do more events and educate more people about their menstrual cycle and reusable products but most importantly we want to help more people who are living in period poverty. Our main goal continues to be to make sustainable periods accessible to everyone.