A new hard-hitting campaign is aiming to highlight the misery of homeless women who are unable to access proper sanitary care . The Homeless Period project hopes to shred the taboo around females living on the streets and their monthly cycle , and is encouraging people to donate tampons and towels to their local homeless shelter . A campaign video tells the story of a woman called Patricia , who slept rough on the streets of Brixton for six months and was forced to use makeshift sanitary products while menstruating . Scroll down for video . The Homeless Period campaign shines a spotlight on the plight of women living on the streets who do n't have access to proper sanitary care during their periods . The team behind the campaign , Oliver Frost , Josie Shedden and Sara Bakhaty , wrote hard-hitting messages on cardboard boxes and photographed them on the streets of London . Using marker pens on cardboard boxes , the video writes the words of Patricia as she speaks them ; focusing on how depressing she found it to not be able to access hygienic menstruation products . Patricia , who used to sleep on the 137 bus in Brixton Hill , says that when her period came , she would use 'ripped up cloth ' as a sanitary towel . She has since been housed in a flat by South London homeless charity Spires . Among the cardboard placards held up are the words : 'Why does a woman have to rip up a cloth put between her to protect herself from bleeding ? ' Another is written with the words : ' I used to feel very depressed . It used to get me down . ' The project was started by Oliver Frost , Josie Shedden and Sara Bakhaty , who met while working as interns at an advertising agency . The trio told FEMAIL that they began the campaign as a way of drawing attention to the amount of women who live on the streets after realising that society considered homelessness to be a 'male ' issue . The campaign has prompted supporters to start their own collection boxes for tampons and sanitary towels : this ( pictured above ) was one of seven boxes collected in the workplace of Twitter user Sarah Wyatt . While homeless shelters receive funding for condoms , there is currently no government funding to supply charities with aid for sanitary products . They said that they were surprised to find that approximately 26 per cent of people who access homelessness services are women . Oliver Frost adds that periods seem to be a forgotten issue when it comes to living on the streets . 'It 's that for many people , it 's never even crossed their minds . As we say on the campaign site `` It does n't bear thinking about… and that 's the problem '' . ' While there is public funding for condoms to be supplied to homeless shelters , there is no financial aid for tampons and sanitary towels . Nearly 81,000 people have signed a petition to lobby the government for better funding to buy sanitary care . Frost says he hopes that the petition will 'promise a more long term solution to the issue , and the amount of funding it would need is relatively small . ' The group aims to present the petition to the Secretary of Health or if they reach their 150,000 signature target before a new government is elected , then to lobby Simon Stevens , Chief Executive of the NHS . A campaign video includes the voice of Patricia , who lived for six months on the streets of Brixton . She says she was forced to used ripped up cloth as a makeshift sanitary towel . Frost said donations are key to the campaign 's success : 'For us , the hope is that # TheHomelessPeriod will become a platform for people wanting to help with donations . 'We 've had people from around the country contact us with their own local initiatives and fundraisers for the campaign . Our side is in promoting those efforts and connecting them with other people who want to help . ' Supporters have been dropping boxes of tampons and towels into their local homeless shelters , with one donor , Sarah Wyatt , so inspired that she has set up a crowd-funding page to encourage more people to donate . On her gofundme page , Wyatt says : ' I recently read an article about the lives of homeless women and the difficulties they face when they have their period . ' I had never really thought about it that way before , these women have little or no access to sanitary products . I decided to do something and did a collection in my workplace which got an amazing response . '
Campaign focuses on lack of sanitary care for women living rough . Video plays voice of homeless woman saying : 'Why does a woman have to rip up a cloth put between her to protect herself from bleeding ? ' Trio behind the project are Oliver Frost , Josie Shedden and FEMAIL . 80,000 people have already signed The Homeless Period petition .