Gabby Edlin - founder of Bloody Good Period
In our second episode of p//balanced accomplished women series, we interviewed CEO and Founder of Bloody Good Period, Gaby Edlin. Gaby is an activist who is working towards ending “period poverty” by aiding sustainable sanitary products to asylum seekers, refugees and women who cannot afford to buy them. She has also been recognised as a key activist in abolishing the VAT on women’s sanitary products in the UK, and was named one of Evening Standard’s progress 1000 top Changemakers in 2018; and, was featured as Stylist’s Women of the Week in the same year. Gaby’s creative and lighthearted approach to helping women’s needs is what drew us to her for our accomplished women’s series.
Gaby shares “when you see an advert with a woman who is suffering and that’s what you’re supposed to be motivated by- there is just no dignity in that”, and thus Bloody Good Period was born. Having graduated as a masters student from CSM in Applied Imagination, Gaby has taken an innovative, comedic approach to the serious concerns regarding women’s menstrual health. She reveals that there is attention regarding menstruation but decided to combat the seriousness and conservativeness of the movement with humour in efforts to make the topic an approachable and comfortable open conversation.
Gaby expresses how taking part in social change started when she was growing up in her Jewish community. She remarks that she isn’t particularly religious but it was more the cultural upbringing that gave her the incentive to begin volunteering and creating change. Besides that, volunteering has always been an internal part of her being. She claims that she is particularly passionate about issues of injustice especially when it comes to feminist-related issues. Gaby’s sense of humour and heart shines through with everything she does, whether it’s fighting the next social corruption or singing her favourite Sting song. “I’m not a particularly good person, I just hate injustice,” Gabby humbly states.
As for the future for Gaby, she hopes the awareness Bloody Good Period has brought will equally make it non-existent, simply because it will self implode and the problem of lacking sanitary products will hopefully be resolved. Her definition of success is quite simple- make a difference and leave a legacy behind knowing that you’ve changed the way people think about things; and with Bloody Good Period now providing over 5,000 sanitary products across the UK a month, Gaby has truly met her definition of success in every sense of the word.