Positive Periods Enable Education
Girls all around the world are missing a quarter of their school days because of a natural bodily function called menstruation or periods.
It’s often a taboo subject, with shame and stigma attached, and many have no method of managing it. Without access to education and safe period products women are forced to use unhygienic methods that can cause infection.
Many women and girls cannot afford to buy period products, and even when these are given for free, in some parts of the world, there is often no good way to dispose of the products after use.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.
The Steve Sinnott Foundation works with people to build local solutions that respect their culture and desires and that are owned and managed by them so that they will work long term.
Our positive periods program is sustainable. Women learn to make their own sanitary pads with locally sourced and affordable materials, alongside investing in health education and skills enables women to manage their periods with dignity and pride.
Our solution has no waste products, it is long lasting, and is eco-friendly. Reusable pads done the right way, are a tried and tested method respecting the differences in each country.
We enable people rather than creating dependence on costly products that clog up the environment. Women teach other women, men teach their sisters, we all teach each other, we are starting a movement, and we are asking you to join it.
There are 10 benefits to our Positive Periods Program:
1. MISSING SCHOOL - Girls will no longer miss a quarter of their school days. This will have a massive impact on their education and thus on their future prospects.
2. SHAME - It will no longer be a taboo subject, with shame and stigma attached. This will allow girls and women to have dignity and pride in their bodies.
3. HEALTH - Hygiene will be improved and infection can be avoided. This will improve women’s health and longevity.
4. ECO-FRIENDLY – They are made of recycled materials, they are re-usable, there is no waste (unlike the disposable sanitary pads that clog up the environment and cause pollution)
5. SUSTAINABLE – The program is based on education, it’s designed to be spread and the knowledge shared so that there is a wave of change.
6. COST - These pads are low cost, and can be made from materials women already have. They can also make pads to sell to others, thus creating an income from them.
7. LOCAL – Each program respects the locale that it is delivered, taking into account the local culture, local materials, local concerns and is delivered by local people. This means that it’s owned by the community.
8. ADAPTABLE - It’s not a one size fits all programme, there are different templates to use, different body shapes to respect, different spaces to teach it in, different equipment to use, and different words to describe a period.
9. COMFORTABLE – The pads have to be comfortable so that women can get on with their day. They have to work with the clothes different women wear and keep them looking good.
10. FUN – Periods don’t have to be boring, even the pads can be made to look nice, and making them together is a fun crafting session for women to talk and laugh together about being women (and often we include men too).
Our vision for Positive Periods is this:
Now girls are able to go to school. Women are talking to each other. Periods are not a taboo, they are a natural and necessary function. Women and men are sharing this program and teaching others.
With your help this programme can be sown in over 10 different countries, it will grow and spread and it will enable girls to go back to school, and women to take control of their lives.
This is Development at its best, women and men working in solidarity! How does it make you feel knowing that you are part of a new, sustainable movement, making periods positive and women free?
We need you to make this happen. So we are asking you to Donate NOW.
Go with the flow.
The Steve Sinnott Foundation • December 1, 2020
On Friday evening ( 29 May, 7.00 pm The Actors Church Covent Garden) we had the pleasure of listening to this very special concert, bringing together the Choir of King's College London and the Princeton High School Orchestra in a celebration of international friendship, collaboration, and shared values. This project reflects a commitment to peace, sustainability, equality, and cultural exchange, uniting young musicians from the United Kingdom and the United States through the universal language of music.
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity.
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here
