Toni Jarvis, founder of Tiger Community Enterprises, holding a reusable menstrual pad

A Nottingham non-profit organisation has sold or given away thousands of handmade reusable menstrual pads to tackle period poverty.

Tiger Community Enterprise CIC, set up nearly 12 years ago, works with one core philosophy: helping people help themselves to grow.

Founder and project director of Tiger, Toni Jarvis, says this motto led the organisation to host sewing and textile based skills workshops to respond to the needs of the community.

This led to the creation of the SuPer Project in 2021, aimed at tackling period poverty in the community, which had become more severe throughout the pandemic.

Toni said: “Before Covid, I was running a sewing class. One week, a group of ladies asked me about creating reusable sanitary wear.

“So I ran a class on making reusable menstrual pads, and it was a huge success.

“I had to put it on the backburner during the pandemic as they are hard to produce – you need special materials and they’re complicated to sew.

“But the pandemic gave us a lot of sewers, which helped in kickstarting the project.”

Now, Toni estimates that Tiger have sold or given away thousands of the handmade pads.

“We work on a buy one, give one away basis. This allows us to give pads away to those in need,” she added.

“We haven’t given away as many as we would like because of the expense in making them.”

A 2023 ActionAid poll found that 21 per cent of people who menstruate in the UK – roughly 2.8m people – struggle to afford period products.

A selection of the handmade menstrual pads made by volunteers, with a waterproof storage bag

The group’s sewing expertise was honed during the Covid pandemic, in which Tiger supported and coordinated Nottingham’s For The Love of Scrubs campaign.

The campaign a whopping 33,000 pieces of handmade clothing to medical practices across the East Midlands during the Covid pandemic.

These clothes included scrubs, scrub hats, drain bags and facemasks, mostly made from upcycled fabrics.

Toni said: “A lot of the fabric we used to make these items was donated, like old duvet covers.

“Some of the scrubs required specialist fabric, so we had to do a fundraiser to get the money to buy those.

“It shows the power of people. Everyone did a bit. Some people would send in two or three items a week, others were a lot more prolific. Between us, it all added up.”

To find out more about the SuPer project, follow this link.