A SCHEME to make sure girls and young women from deprived backgrounds can access the sanitary products they need is being given a boost by a Keighley supermarket.

Nicole McGuinness, community champion at the town's Morrisons store, has set up a collection point near the supermarket's customer service desk.

"It is for customers to donate sanitary wear to make sure no young girl misses out on school," she explained.

Donations will go towards the national Red Box Project, which stocks boxes of sanitary wear in schools across the country, including in Keighley and Bradford districts.

The project was founded in 2017 by three friends who wanted to give young people in their local area access to sanitary products.

After reading about ‘Period Poverty" in the news, they were angered at the idea that young women were missing out on their education because they could not afford the products they needed during their period.

Children's charity PLAN International UK, which carried out a study of 14 to 21-year-old girls and young women in the UK, found one in 10 had been unable to afford sanitary protection, while 49 per cent had missed an entire day of school because of their period.