About two and a half years ago, Eloise and I went to a leadership conference
and we were introduced to the social enterprise model which in its simplest
form is just a business that has a social cause or an environmental cause.
At around the same time we were learning about the state of menstrual
health care overseas that 30% of girls have to drop out of school as soon as
they get their period. And we started to learn about the reproductive diseases
that can come about if the girl doesn't have access to the right product or safe hygienic products.
So we're a registered business selling organic cotton pads and
tampons to the Australian market online and we dedicate all our net profit to
funding projects that fight period poverty around the world.
It's been about three years, so we came up with the idea at end of Year 12, took a gap year to get
it started and develop it and just see if people liked the idea and would be onboard as well.
I'm not sure we had an idea of what it would look like when we
started, it was just a cool idea we thought we'd give it a good go but now it's
just blown us away and every day just gets bigger and bigger and more people
want to get involved which is so exciting and we're just taking it with both hands.
The uncomfortable feeling that some of
you may have around this topic is totally understandable.
I started a campaign called free periods
which is asking the government to do more to end period property in the UK.
From United Nations television.
They don't have facilities in schools so they can't change their cloths or pads easily.
We spent a lot of time researching and
last year we travelled to Kenya and India to just shadow some pre-existing
organisations and see how they are sustainably tackling the issue.
We're really excited to partner with One Girl. They do amazing things working hand in
hand with people in community in Sierra Leone and Uganda and we love the
sustainability of their work and we know that they're really culturally
appropriate when it comes to menstrual health care and chat to the
girls and the boys about menstrual health care so it breaks down that taboo.
So we're a quite a small not-for-profit and we actually make a big commitment to
girls in places like Sierra Leone and Uganda. That we will support them
throughout their entire school journey because we feel that it is so important
for girls to be able to concentrate on studying, on looking towards their future
and what they want to be when they graduate school not worrying about are
they even going to be in school in the next year.
Because when you support a girl she gives back to her entire community.
Period, period, period, period, period, period, period!
The other main aspect to our mission is giving people a space in
Australia to talk about menstruation, to ask questions and to encourage
conversation between boys and girls as well.
No we're not talking punctuation we're talking menstruation.
We found that guys are actually entering the conversation
and it's becoming kind of normalised as time progresses and that's so important
because it's a natural bodily function like any other thing and half the
population goes through it so we should probably talk about it.
Through our partnership with Vinnie's crisis shelter, you can jump online
choose if they want to support a woman who's in a crisis situation and you can
also subscribe for a woman in community Australia through our partnership with NPY Women's Council.
We're offering our product online as a subscription so
you can have your product delivered to your door every month or every three months
but we also really would love to be on supermarket shelves and things
like that, so we'd love to be one of the leading brands of pads and tampons.
We really wanted to make sure it was a good quality product that was 100%
organic cotton and because that's what the market wants and that's what our
customers deserve. We'd love to have customers that feel as a part of our
community as we do and as the team does, that's a big part of Taboo
and we'd love them to stay with us for as long as they bleed pretty much.