Law Society shortlists the Period Poverty Campaign for their Legal Excellence Awards 2019

The Law Society, in its 12th year of celebrating the hard work and inspirational achievements of solicitors, legal teams and firms across England and Wales through its annual Excellence Awards, today announced that the ‘Hausfeld, Free Periods and Red Box Project’ was shortlisted in the ‘Excellence in Access to Justice’ category.

What was the project about? 

Lawyers from Hausfeld, Free Periods and the Red Box Project teamed up behind the long committed campaigner Amika George to launch the campaign with CrowdJustice to eliminate Period Poverty in January 2019. In April 2019, the Government confirmed funding for free sanitary products for all English schools and colleges from early 2020. Justice was obtained on behalf of all school children in England.

Ingrid Gubbay, Head of the Human Rights & Environment practice at Hausfeld London, said:

“This was very much a collaborative project. Amika George, the Founder of Free Periods, started her social media campaign in 2017, when she discovered girls were not attending school due to the hidden embarrassment of not being able to afford sanitary products. The Red Box Project campaigns and provides red boxes - now totalling some 3,600 - with free period products to local schools. With the right to education a fundamental human right, Hausfeld explored legal avenues to hold Government to account and to ensure it complied with its legal obligations. By coordinating our efforts, we became a stronger force.”

Wessen Jazrawi, Partner, adds:

“Social media enabled Amika George to create awareness around Period Poverty which was picked up by major news outlets. We then converted ‘awareness’ into the real possibility of legal action. The fact that we were all lawyers, except for Amika, facilitated understanding across three, essentially, different organisations. It also shows that the whole is more than the sum of its parts: by combining the efforts of two campaigning organisations and adding the weight of Hausfeld’s legal expertise, the upshot was much more powerful and effective.”

The winner will be announced at a ceremony on Wednesday 23rd October 2019 in London.