MENSTRUATION: EMPOWERMENT AND SUSTAINABILITY (MENSY) 

What is MENSY?

Embark on a journey with the MENSY project – a groundbreaking initiative designed to amplify the impact of partner organisations in the feminist and environmental sectors, focusing on youth engagement.

Our mission is to create a comprehensive suite of training resources on menstruation and sustainability, incorporating proven elements from existing programmes and scaling them for use across Europe and beyond.

At the heart of MENSY is our commitment to combat menstrual poverty by breaking the taboo surrounding menstruation. Despite being a natural and universal process, menstruation remains a hushed topic, leading to inadequate conditions and a lack of systemic support for women, girls and people who menstruate worldwide.

Menstruation

Menstruation is a natural process that occurs every month for (at least) half of the world’s population during certain periods of their lives. And although it is so common, it is still a taboo topic in most parts of the world, resulting in inadequate conditions and lack of systemic support for women, girls and those who menstruate.  

Period Equity

The taboo associated with menstruation leads to a social phenomenon known as period equity meaning that millions of women, girls and people who menstruate are subjected to injustice and inequity due to insufficient access to menstrual products, education, and sanitation facilities.   

Existing menstrual stigma and taboos results in lack of proper information and perpetuates the lack of accessibility to safe (toxic-free), fair (tax-free) and circular (reusable) products that people need. 

Period products

Nowadays, the vast majority of menstrual products such as pads, liners and tampons being sold on the European market (and globally) are single-use disposable products.  

These types of products have environmental, economic, health and social impacts from production through to disposal. Even though better alternatives, such as reusable products (i.e: period pants and cups) as well as toxic chemical and plastic free products have existed for decades. There are many obstacles to general use such as lack of knowledge and accessibility.

MENSY Training programme

Through the MENSY project, partner organisations will engage at least 160 youth leaders interested in combining environmental, economic and gender justice approaches to menstrual education by piloting and evaluating the training program “Menstruation: Empowerment and Sustainability”.

We expect at least 80 youth leaders from 8 European countries to commit to hold training for young people they work with a year after completing the pilot.  

Advocacy

The results of the project will be used for advocacy purposes at the local, European and international level. The MENSY project will raise awareness about period poverty and equity and taboos as well as the environmental, health and societal impacts of single-use disposable menstrual products and the aggressive marketing perpetuating existing stigma and taboos.  

We will be combating menstrual poverty by breaking the taboo and empowering women, girls and those who menstruate using a gender justice approach.