On Human Rights Day 2018, Generation. Education. Period. (G.E.P) hosted a campaign asking people what they take for granted. The purpose behind this was to get people to appreciate the things in their lives that are often looked over. We were inspired by a campaign called the “Dear World Project” created by Miami University in which people would write their identities or share their stories on their bodies’. We decided to recreate it so that it fit our focus group better and also so that it connected to the UDHR. We wanted to draw the connection between how women often take their sanitary products for granted and just how privileged people are to receive an education. One of the other missions of our group is to subvert the idea of periods and promote sustainable sanitary products for girls in need in order for them to continue their education while on their period.
For the making of the campaign video, we asked some of the volunteers in the video to explain why they chose to write what they did on their arms. After compiling the clips and outtakes of the people involved in the campaign, we layered them with specific, reflective and more enlightening audio anecdotes in order to create a cohesive final product. In order to bring the focus back onto GEP, we included our mission at the end as well as some facts about period poverty to raise awareness on the severity and importance of the issue we are trying to raise awareness for.
It has been very exciting to see our video go ‘live’ to the school and wider community by connecting it to International Women’s Day on Friday 8th March. It has been shared on the school’s twitter, instagram and facebook pages and has been viewed widely. The power of social media to advocate for important issues is really clear to us, and we are looking forward to more people being able to see our video.
