Menstruation: Empowerment and sustainability (MENSY)

The MENSY project is designed to increase the capacity of partner organisations – working in the feminist and/or environmental field – to work with young people with the aim of creating a cohesive suite of training resources on menstruation and sustainability, incorporating elements found to be the most effective in existing programmes, and scaled up for use on an European level and beyond. 

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 those who menstruate. 

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

Furthermore, it results in lack of proper information and perpetuates the lack of accessibility to safe (toxic-free), fair (tax-free) and circular (reusable) products that menstruators need. Nowadays, the vast majority of menstrual products being sold on the European market (and globally) are single-use disposable products: including pads, liners and tampons. 

These type of products have environmental, economic, health and social impacts from production to disposal and beyond. 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 including lack of knowledge and accessibility. 

 
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 the training program “Menstruation: Empowerment and Sustainability” as well as evaluating it before its finalization. 

We expect at least 80 youth leaders from 8 European countries to commit to holding training for the youth they work with within a year of completing the pilot.
Apart from that, the project and its results will be used for advocacy purposes at local, regional, national, European and global level. The MENSY project will raise awareness about period poverty and equity as well as the environmental, health and socio-economic impacts of single use disposable menstrual products, along with the aggressive and misogynistic marketing perpetuating existing menstrual stigma and taboos. We will be combating menstrual poverty by breaking the taboo and empowering menstruators using a gender justice approach. 

Partners in this project are: VOICE(Ireland) - project coordinators, Zelena akcija / Friends of the Earth Croatia (Croatia), REZERO (Spain), WEN (UK),Greenzone (Hungary), ZERO (Portugal), WECF (Netherlands) i ZWLviv (Ukraine) - project partners.r 

The project is financed from the ERASMUS plus program (Programme Erasmus+ Action Type KA220-ADU - Cooperation partnerships in the field of youth) under the leadership of Leargas, the Irish national agency. The views expressed in this project and project activities are the sole responsibility of Zelena akcija / FoE Croatia and project partners and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union.  

 
Duration of the project: 31/12/2023 - 30/12/2025 
The total value of the project: 400.000,00 EUR