Unwanted office furniture put to great use by wonderful London period poverty charity
Alvina Appleton, Executive Director at For the People from the People CIC, a period poverty charity set up in 2017, was delighted when she spotted pedestals being listed on the A Good Thing platform, as well as storage units. She knew straightaway how useful they would be to her London-wide “Bleedin’ Cabinets” project.
Alleviating period poverty
The organisation provides free period products to women and girls via cabinets that are set up in libraries, community centres, family centres and leisure centres across London, stocked with free tampons and pads.
Alvina tells us the charity is on a mission to ensure “that women and girls in our communities have menstrual products available and accessible to them, regardless of their background or circumstances.” As well as supplying products, For the People From the People raises awareness about period poverty and women’s reproductive health, and educates and encourages women to use more affordable, reusable and sustainable period products.
Decorated and reused
Alvina’s organisation recently received 89 small sets of under-desk drawers from Business2Schools, a charity that works to provide a brighter future for children in schools across the UK. We asked Alvina how the furniture would be useful to her CIC:
“We’ll turn the drawers and units into sanitary cabinets, but we’ll invite women to design the handles and decorate the pedestals before they’re installed. We don’t want them to look like office furniture!”
Alvina was very positive about using A Good Thing and being matched with the two businesses:
“It was all very straightforward. In the case of Business2Schools, they put us in touch with their delivery company, and the delivery was paid for – the furniture was delivered to us for free. We have been mainly working in Hammersmith and Fulham, but we’re looking to extend across all of London’s boroughs – and this donation has really helped!”
Faster growth
We asked Alvina how she had sourced furniture for her project in the past, and asked her for her final thoughts on using A Good Thing:
“I’ve used eBay to source secondhand furniture and cabinets in the past – but it’s not always easy to find what we need, and even secondhand things can be costly. Thank you so much, A Good Thing! These donations have allowed us to make our project London-wide much sooner than we had expected.”
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