Freedom4Girls: 'People are using tea towels and socks to manage their periods and it shouldn't be happening' says founder of Leeds period poverty charity

Whilst volunteering on a mother and baby project in Kenya, Tina Leslie was struck by the scale of period poverty. At the time, 11 years ago, some 65 per cent of girls and women there didn't have access to safe period protection, with some using rags and corn husks in place of menstrual products.

It stirred an uncomfortable memory for Tina, of relying on makeshift methods when she got her first period during a French exchange trip. “I was 11-years old and didn't know what to do,” she recalls.

“I was too embarrassed to ask the teachers. And my French exchanger was a boy and he had three brothers.

"So I spent the week of my very first period sleeping on the floor because I didn't want to ruin the beautiful French sheets, being really embarrassed, and using toilet paper and things like that.

"What struck me in Kenya was that girls were having to do this every month, having to find alternative methods.”

She remembers speaking to an elder in the community about the challenges for girls in Kenya. “He said they miss school, they get pregnant, there's a lot of transactional sex that goes on for pads.

"They use rags and corn husks to manage their periods and some, if they don't have a rag, they just sit in a hole for a week.”

In Tina’s belly, the fire was lit. She wanted to do something to help. Back home in Yorkshire, she got friends together and started to experiment with making menstrual pads.

Then, with the support of a charity, she launched sewing workshops in Kenya, supporting local women to make washable, reusable sanitary items, and supplying them to schools, alongside menstrual and reproductive education.

In late 2016, she founded her own charity Freedom4Girls, which Tina set up to fight period poverty.

Little did she know that within a year, it would also be operating 10,000km away in her hometown of Leeds. Thousands of people who menstruate across the UK found themselves struggling too, she says – and ten years on, that remains the case.

“With the the cost of living crisis at the moment, the situation is getting worse and worse,” the 61-year-old says.

A 2025 House of Commons research briefing on food banks in the UK noted a general trend of rising demand for food parcels over the last 15 years. It highlighted Department for Work and Pensions survey data which suggested four per cent of individuals across the nation used a food bank in 2023-24.

"If you can’t afford food, you can’t afford hygiene or period products,” notes Tina, who formerly worked in public health.

“I think it's a massive, massive issue and it's not going to go away anytime soon. It hasn't gone away in the last 10 years nearly that I've been doing this. It's got worse, not got better. We need an ally within the government to support us.”

In 2017, Tina was told of girls in her home city missing school whilst menstruating because they did not have access to affordable products.

In 2020, the then-Government launched a period product scheme in schools and colleges, which aims to provide pupils who menstruate with sanitary items when they need them, if, for example, students can’t afford period products, have forgotten to bring them to school or college, or have come on their period unexpectedly.

"It’s a great scheme,” acknowledges Tina, though it relies on products being made available in toilets or pupils having enough confidence to ask for them. “And what happens when you’re not in school, in the holidays?”, she questions.

Today, Freedom4Girls distributes hundreds of thousands of period products across Kenya and in Leeds and Leicester (where a new branch of the charity was set up in 2023), including disposable products and washable, reusables. Last year, it delivered more than 35,000 products, supporting the likes of food banks, mental health charities and social justice organisations. The charity also focuses on education around periods and menstrual health and tackling any shame, stigma and taboo associated with menstruation.

People shouldn’t have to choose between buying food or period products but it’s the sad reality for some, says Tina, who was appointed an MBE in 2023 for her work in period poverty. She hopes Freedom4Girls can help to fill a “hole” left by the closure of nationwide charity Bloody Good Period, which shut in November last year amid “severe financial pressures facing the wider sector”, but says the organisation needs backing and support.

"I think the government needs to see that poverty is a massive issue yes, but period poverty and period dignity is also a huge issue because if you haven't got access to safe period protection, you can't go to school, you can't go to work,” she says. “Half the population menstruate and we are contributing to the economy.

“I personally think what should happen is that we should make it policy that yes we provide hygiene products in toilets as in soap and toilet paper and sanitary bins but why not period products too?

“There’s people not being able to go to work because they're bleeding heavily and they've only got one pack of pads and there's only 10 in them. We've come across people who are using tea towels, they're using socks, they're using bits out of pillow cases to manage their periods. It's so unhygienic and unhealthy and it shouldn't be happening in 2026.”

The Yorkshire Post approached the Government for comment.