Vancity implements Period Promise Policy

October 17, 2019, Coast Salish Territory/Vancouver, B.C. — Vancity credit union has today announced it is signing the Period Promise Policy Agreement, joining a growing number of organizations throughout British Columbia that have embraced this important United Way campaign.

Period Promise started as national labour initiative to help celebrate International Women’s Day, and to bring attention to the need for making menstrual products more accessible to those living in poverty. It has since been adopted across the country and across United Way departments in a more inclusive way. The campaign challenges organizations of all types to provide free menstrual products for staff, clientele, customers or others related to the work they each do.

With today’s Agreement, the credit union is making menstrual products freely available in all staff washrooms, which are inclusive and available to people regardless of ability or gender, or in adjacent staff facilities.

“One of the commitments we’ve made to our members is to lead by example and use our resources to effect positive change in our communities,” says Christine Bergeron, Vancity’s chief member services officer. “By taking this step forward, we hope to remove some of the stigma around menstruation and show our support for the overall campaign while also making menstrual products available to our employees.”

One of B.C.’s largest private sector companies, Vancity has been a longtime supporter of the research and development of the Period Promise campaign.

Earlier this year, B.C.’s Parliamentary Secretary for Gender Equity, Mitzi Dean, challenged businesses, workplaces and public spaces to provide free and accessible menstrual products in their washrooms. Vancity is answering that call for change, and challenges other organizations to do the same.

“Period Promise is bringing help and dignity to people who can’t afford menstrual products and I commend Vancity for taking up the charge,” says Dean. “Having a period is a part of life for more than half our population and ensuring these products are readily available meets a basic human need for those who menstruate.”

“I want to thank Vancity, not only for signing the policy agreement, but for supporting critical research that informed the policy framework itself,” says Michael McKnight, President & CEO, United Way of the Lower Mainland. “This policy and signatories like Vancity are decreasing the vulnerability and isolation created by period poverty, on a wider scale, across our communities. We’re encouraged to see progressive, pace-setting organizations like Vancity take such a leadership role when it comes to tackling period poverty locally.”

“The labour movement is proud to support United Way’s Period Promise campaign,” says Janet Andrews, Secretary-Treasurer of the New Westminster & District Labour Council. “The New Westminster & District Labour Council is particularly excited to see an organization the size of Vancity come on board through its policy commitment. Period poverty impacts the most vulnerable in our communities, but commitments like Vancity’s go a long way toward addressing the need by supplying and promoting free tampons and pads in our washrooms. To make our workplaces and communities more equitable and accessible a commitment like this just makes sense.”

About Vancity

Vancity is a values-based financial co-operative serving the needs of its more than 534,000 member-owners and their communities in the unceded territories of the Coast Salish and Kwakwaka’wakw people, with 59 branches in Metro Vancouver, the Fraser Valley, Victoria, Squamish and Alert Bay. With $27.4 billion in assets plus assets under administration, Vancity is Canada’s largest community credit union. Vancity uses its assets to help improve the financial well-being of its members while at the same time helping to develop healthy communities that are socially, economically and environmentally sustainable.

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For more information:

Media Relations | Vancity
T: 778-837-0394
mediarelations@vancity.com