MBE at 25 for Swindon man

A Swindon man has been made MBE at the age of only 25 in the Queen's Birthday Honours.

Clegg Bamber and two friends founded the Red Box Project in Portsmouth in March of 2017 to give young people in their area access to menstrual products and combat period poverty.

Mr Bamber was a student at the time.

The organisation has since expanded its projects throughout the UK and to locations as diverse as the USA, Poland, Moldova, the Republic of Ireland, Jersey and the Isle of Man.

Mr Bamber, originally from Lancashire, has lived in Swindon for three years and is Futures Programme Manager at the Natural Environment Research Council.

He said: "There was a piece - I think it was on BBC News - about a teacher who had come forward and said a young person had asked for period products because they couldn't afford them and didn't have access to them otherwise.

"For us that was obviously a bit of a shock. For me personally, I had heard about period poverty being a thing but I had thought of it as more associated with the developing world and the wider aspects of poverty. I definitely didn't think we had that issue here in 21st century Britain, and yet, lo and behold, we did.

"From that, we kicked off the project. We started it in Portsmouth, and the idea was that we bought a red box of period products - pads and tampons, etc - and we put them into a school. Our plan was to have every school covered in Portsmouth. From that, social media did its trick and spread the word, and we had projects in more or less every corner of the country from London to Barrow-in-Furness up north and Dumfries and Galloway in Scotland to Port Talbot in the Valleys in Wales.

"At the height of the project we had more than 6,000 boxes installed in schools and colleges across the UK." 

Red Box became a major national voice which in 2018 joined forces with like-minded organisation Free Periods, and launched legal action against the Government to overturn what a growing number of people saw as a major inequality.

In March of the following year the Government announced it would fund period products in secondary schools and colleges, but Red Box and Free Periods refused to stop lobbying until the scheme was extended to primary schools.

In January of 2020 the Department for Education announced its Period Product Scheme, allowing educational institutions to provide necessary items for all who needed them at no charge.

In spite of having helped to bring about such a major change, Mr Bamber was surprised to receive the letter informing him of his honour.

He recalled: "I was shocked at first and had to reread the letter several times to make sure it was genuinely me and there hadn't been some confusion.

"It's such a humbling experience to be recognised for the work and I never, ever thought I'd see my name on an honours list - and yet here we are!"