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Nathalie Kornet, a Fellow of 2020 Humanity in Action Warsaw Fellowship/Academy of Human Rights carried out her Action Project in the form of a workshop on November 27, 2020 with help of Artik Freiburg and the Aufbegehren! Kollektiv.
The aim of the “Talking Period(s)” workshop was to create a space to openly talk about everything related to periods, most importantly the shame and its political aspects. By offering a space with information and exchange, Nathalie and her teammates gave the participants the possibility to find similarities and connect over past, frustrating or empowering experiences, to exchange resources and to take the taboo off of menstruation.
As Nathalie stresses “I have been working on the topic of menstrual visibility and justice for a while. My initial inspiration was how openly the topic was dealt with at my university in Canada and also the fact that I developed problems with my menstrual cycle. The need to share and the knowledge that it could look differently, were the first motivators to be active within this field. To implement this Action Project, thus to develop a workshop, was mainly inspired by the emancipatory effect by other feminist workshops that I have participated in over the years, as well as projects such as Humanity in Action which showed how empowering exchange with diverse people can be”.
Specifically, Natalie and her activist partners developed two workshop formats, one being online, the other offline. They first gathered all their resources and looked at what they wanted to share and what kind of place, especially relating to workshops they have all participated in, they wanted to create. They researched what they did not know and developed questions, games and inputs to create a nice atmosphere, where everyone would feel free to share and to discuss their questions and experiences. However, due to COVID everything needed to be moved online. Despite the online format, the workshop has been a great success!
At the moment, Natalie is trying to create a network of menstrual activists in Germany. Want to be in the know? Follow Period Box Freiburg on Instagram!
Also listen to Natalie in HumanityTALKS!
