Interval House, Canada’s first shelter for abused women, is committed to putting an end to domestic violence.

We wanted to find a way to help more women leave their abusive relationships and get the help they need.

Our project was focused on reaching women in the communities immediately surrounding Interval House, and we were working with a budget of less than $50K.

We also had another hurdle. We knew that if an abusive partner finds any sign that a woman is planning on leaving, it could put her life in danger.

So our challenge was to find a way to get life-saving information in women’s hands, without her abusive partner finding out about it.

Introducing Freedom Tampons.

Discreet protection for women escaping domestic abuse.

Each tampon has life-saving information printed right on it, including Interval House’s crisis hotline, a checklist of what a woman needs to leave, and signs of abuse. And each tampon comes in a resealable package that doesn’t give any indication of the information that’s inside.

It’s all the information a woman needs to leave, in the one place a man will never look.

It can be incredibly challenging to reach women in abusive relationships, because their abusers are always monitoring their every move.

So we came up with the strategy of getting these women life-saving information that they could easily keep secret from their partners.

By creating Freedom Tampons, we gave women a way to keep information like Interval House’s crisis line, hidden in plain sight.

We sent full boxes of tampons to counsellors, healthcare workers, and the police, knowing that these people have direct, daily contact with women in abusive relationships.

We also distributed them in public women’s washrooms, the one place that a woman in an abusive relationship can escape her partner’s constant monitoring.

What looked like a regular tampon dispenser actually gave away Freedom Tampons. A woman in danger could simply turn the dial, slip one into her purse and walk away with information that could save her life.

Counsellors, health care professionals, and police officers responded very positively to the initiative, and immediately reached out to Interval House to request more of them.

Since these tampons have been in market, calls to the Interval House Crisis Hotline have increased by 176%, and the shelter has been at full capacity.