Independent Media backs a bold campaign to fight period poverty and restore dignity.
Today, readers of The Star, The Mercury and Cape Times opened their newspapers to find something deeply uncomfortable: period blood stains splashed across the front page and seeping through the pages beneath, as though the newspaper itself had been used as a sanitary pad.
Because for nearly four million South African schoolgirls, it effectively has been.
The powerful Period Paper campaign was created by leading independent advertising agency Joe Public in partnership with the MENstruation Foundation and Independent Media. The campaign confronts one of the country’s most widely experienced but least discussed realities: period poverty. Its message is stark and unforgettable: “A newspaper can absorb the blood, but not the shame.”
The decision to use newspapers as the campaign medium was deliberate and symbolic. For millions of young girls living in poverty, newspapers, rags and other unsafe materials are often used as substitutes for sanitary products. By turning newspapers themselves into the message, the campaign forces readers to confront an uncomfortable reality many young women face every month.
