The Dugdale Trust for Women & Girls and the Chalice Foundation come together in a unique working relationship.
We are excited about this partnership. Between us we are well placed to help realise positive menstrual wellbeing, which in turn will assist women to achieve gender equity. The Chalice Foundation was founded by Jane Bennett to promote menstrual wellbeing, provide quality menstrual education for all demographics and train and support menstrual educators. The Victorian Women’s Trust created The Dugdale Trust for Women & Girls to enable harm prevention work to be done on a national level. The Victorian Women’s Trust serves as trustee.
Our journey together around positive menstrual culture began in 2013 when The Dugdale Trust for Women & Girls resolved to explore the contemporary menstrual experience of women and girls, to assess levels of harm and effective mitigation strategies. Thousands of women and girls shared their experiences between 2014 and 2017, and the negative impact of the menstrual taboo on health and wellbeing was shockingly apparent.
These findings were analysed and subsequently published in About Bloody Time: The Menstrual Revolution We Have to Have. In the book’s ‘Call to Action’ authors Jane Bennett and Karen Pickering clearly spell out the next important steps we need to take in the quest to prevent further harm and advance equity and wellbeing.
Publishing this important work was one thing. Using it to press for change is now our joint mission. We have set out our partnership in a Services Agreement, which is our framework that captures our mutual goals around advocacy, community education and outreach work – across families, local communities, schools, and workplaces.
While we are pausing our plans for in-person events, along with the entire community, as we all work to mitigate the worst impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’re currently serving our mutual goals by releasing free resources and blogs, and working on a Health Standard for Menstrual Wellbeing. To keep up to date with these offerings sign up here.
You can send us the topics you’re most interested in here.