To raise awareness this month for Women’s Health Week and Menstrual Hygiene Day, a creative group of both male and female C5ers set out to build a robust interactive experience to celebrate and raise awareness around an important but often forgotten stigmatized women’s issue: menstrual health. 

Why We Care About Menstrual Health

More than half of the world’s population experiences menstruation monthly, so why is something so common also so taboo, uncomfortable, and mysterious? The way we think and talk about menstruation affects how we approach hygiene, care, and education, so it’s a big deal. We felt a project that explores the realities of menstruation could help make this unnecessarily tricky topic easier to understand.

So we created a new interactive, People for Periods, in which we explore the factors that have contributed to the silence surrounding periods and how this lack of discussion and understanding directly impacts the health and quality of life for menstruating people.

Because this is more than just a women’s issue; it’s a health issue.

To explore this topic from various angles, we divided the project into three sections. The first section takes a look at the history and business of menstrual health. The second tests your knowledge about periods and pop culture. And the final section examines how women around the world deal with menstruation.

The title, People for Periods, came after realizing how this project had turned us into zealous supporters and vigilant defenders. After doing the research and sharing what we were finding with each other, we found ourselves passionate about a topic that deserves more attention and more advocates.

We believe that even if you’re not a person with a period, you can still be a person who champions healthy, happy, shame-free periods.
This is one of many passion projects created by Column Five. It was born out of a C5 brainstorm that focused on coming up with an interesting and creative way to celebrate Women’s History Month in March and evolved from there. Check out our other projects, including Beyond the Beat, an interactive site dedicated to black musicians who have made a difference in music history.