Blues Join Fight To End Period Poverty
Everton Football Club is working with the global feminine hygiene brand Lil-Lets to provide female supporters with free sanitary products at Goodison Park.
Lil-Lets will become Everton’s Official Supporter in the fight to end period poverty, providing sanitary products across the remaining home games in the 2018-19 season. The feminine hygiene product provider will also deliver educational classes in collaboration with the Club and its official charity Everton in the Community in the hope of raising awareness around the issue.
Everton has been supplying free Lil-Lets female hygiene products to participants and visitors to its community facilities which includes the Everton Free School and Everton College, The People’s Hub (community centre), Blue Base (multi-purpose centre which runs programmes for the elderly and disabled) and for the first time they will also be available to female supporters on matchdays at Goodison Park. The Club’s next home Premier League fixture against Crystal Palace on Sunday 21 October has seen all accessible and ladies’ toilets at Goodison Park kitted out with free sanitary products for supporters to take at their discretion.
The move sees Everton get behind the ‘On the Ball’ campaign, which is championing the need for free sanitary products in football stadiums. The campaign, aimed at helping to end ‘period poverty’, was founded by three students and has been adopted by a number of Clubs across the UK.
Sarah Atherton, Neighbourhood Manager at Everton in the Community, said: “We feel it is very important to offer our female supporters these crucial amenities throughout Goodison Park. Free sanitary products have been available in other buildings across the Goodison Campus and now thanks to our partnership with Lil-Lets we’ll be replicating that in our stadium on matchdays. Our supporters are part of the Everton family and when we hear figures that one in 10 female fans feel they cannot afford better sanitary products due to affordability issues, that’s where we feel we need to get involved and support. We want to make sure that menstruation is not a barrier for our female supporters to enjoy football at Goodison Park.”
Danny Wild, General Manager at Lil-Lets, said: “We are delighted to be joining Everton in the battle against period poverty. As a leading UK Feminine hygiene brand it is important we partner Everton in this project helping to provide thousands of female supporters free sanitary products while raising awareness of period poverty in the process.”
‘On the Ball’ founders Orlaith Duffy, Mikaela McKinley and Erin Slaven decided to launch their campaign after learning that not all toilets had sanitary bins and sanitary products were locked away in machines which required exact change. Upon hearing of Everton’s agreement with Lil-Lets, Mikaela from On The Ball, said: “We’re so excited that Everton is ‘On the Ball’ with free period products for their fans. With Goodison Park known for having more female fans than most Premier League clubs, this is a natural step for the Club to take. Evertonians have been so supportive of our campaign and we hope they will be as proud as we are of the Toffees! Well done to everyone involved.”
Everton Free School
