27 June 2024
Building South West Partnerships for SDG 5 in Exeter
SWIDN were delighted to have the opportunity to attend the inaugural 4M Conference held at the University of Exeter in June, meeting inspirational researchers and practitioners working all over the world to improve menstrual health and management, sexual, reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and improve participation and access for people who menstruate and experience menopause, both in our programmes and workplaces.
We had the opportunity to share on a panel discussion around research gaps in this area, plugging the importance of collaboration between academics and practitioners to improve the impact of research and best practice interventions. The panel discussion was highlighted on BBC Women’s Hour here, along with further information from the conference host Dr Gemma Sharp.
If you would like to hear more about the conference in 2025, please email Hannah via hannah@swidn.org.uk. We’d love to share the details with our members whose work overlaps with SDG 5 relating to menarche, menstruation, menopause and mental heatlh.
We are also looking into delivering a few events for our wider members to follow up on content we learnt at the conference. These will include an informal working group to consider the impact of unmet menstrual needs on achieving the SDGs, suitable for anyone working in education, WASH, health, climate, gender, disability or with people who menstruate.
We are also interested in hearing from our practitioner and researcher members on how they can work better together to increase impact and improve interventions. Please get in touch with hannah@swidn.org.uk if you would like to pick up this conversation.
More News
That Swedish ‘Fika’ Feeling (or Tackling the big Questions Together)
I’ve never been to Sweden before. From dashing out the door at 5am for the coach to Heathrow, to arriving back in the early hours of the morning 3 days later, it was a dizzying, inspiring, exhausting, and quite honestly life-changing experience. Dare I say it, my trip to Sweden last week was reparative. In…
Theory of Cause, anyone?
In June, SWIDN were delighted to host a discussion event with a few of our organisational and academic members at the Development Studies Association Conference at the University of Bath, hosted by the Centre for Development Studies. The topic was whether it’s possible to decolonise development and move practice into something reparative. If reparative development…
Focus on Family Care
In July we had the opportunity to partner with Hub Cymru Africa and Hope and Homes for Children to deliver an open-access, online event focused on care for marginalised children. Designed to connect and support UK charities and donors working with at-risk children internationally, this event was an opportunity to share best-practice resources and explore…
