Hello!

This weekend I’m hiking for Period Justice with some amazing
young period equality activists.

I’m super excited to be able to do the hike this year because last year I was too unwell with long-covid. The last two years have been a long hard fight for the Irise team. We’ve all been ill at one point or another, we’ve all seen hard won changes in the fight for girls’ rights pushed back and we’ve all seen our own communities struggling to get by.

Did you know that the number of girls in school globally has dropped for the first time in a decade and that it’s expected to take an additional generation to close the global gender gap?

Despite these unprecedented challenges, at Irise we’ve kept
fighting and we’ve supported each other across cultures, contexts and divides to keep pushing for a fairer more equal world.

That’s why I’m particularly happy to be hiking for the amazing work of our sister organisation, Irise Institute East Africa team- at a time when funding for gender equality is being slashed I’m determined to stand
with strong, female leaders in the Global South who cannot and will not give-up.

We’re raising funds for a fantastic programme called Rise-Up.

We launched the programme, with some amazing partners,
including the Kulczyk Foundation and the Evan Cornish Foundation, during the pandemic in response to reports of girls’ having transactional sex to pay for the pads, toiletries and underwear they needed to stay in school. The programme supports female led social enterprises tackling period poverty in Uganda and pairs them up with school girls to provide mentorship and start-up capital so they can start earning their own income and escape the cycle of period poverty and shame that threatens their futures.

You can find out more about it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jm1FlN9La_E&t=27s

Leila, one of the girls participating in the programme, thanked Irise for recognising her “capability” and that is what Irise has always been about- a global community unlocking the potential of people the world underestimates.

I’ve done this hike many times, even when my daughter was just 3 months old, and it’s become symbolic for me of the need to persist in the difficult business of creating positive change.

So…I’d like to invite you to join me in my unrelenting persistence by hiking with me, donating to the cause or sharing this message with
others.