text: A new hard-hitting campaign is aiming to highlight the misery of homeless women who are unable to access proper sanitary care. The Homeless Period project hopes to shred the taboo around females living on the streets and their monthly cycle, and is encouraging people to donate tampons and towels to their local homeless shelter. A campaign video  tells the story of a woman called Patricia, who slept rough on the streets of Brixton for six months and was forced to use makeshift sanitary products while menstruating. Scroll down for video . The Homeless Period campaign shines a spotlight on the plight of women living on the streets who don't have access to proper sanitary care during their periods . The team behind the campaign, Oliver Frost, Josie Shedden and Sara Bakhaty, wrote hard-hitting messages on cardboard boxes and photographed them on the streets of London . Using marker pens on cardboard boxes, the video writes the words of Patricia as she speaks them; focusing on how depressing she found it to not be able to access hygienic menstruation products. Patricia, who used to sleep on the 137 bus in Brixton Hill, says that when her period came, she would use 'ripped up cloth' as a  sanitary towel. She has since been housed in a flat by South London homeless charity Spires. Among the cardboard placards held up are the words: 'Why does a woman have to rip up a cloth put between her to protect herself from bleeding?' Another is written with the words: 'I used to feel very depressed. It used to get me down.' The project was started by Oliver Frost, Josie Shedden and Sara Bakhaty, who met while working as interns at an advertising agency. The trio told FEMAIL that they began the campaign as a way of drawing attention to the amount of women who live on the streets after realising that society considered homelessness to be a 'male' issue. The campaign has prompted supporters to start their own collection boxes for tampons and sanitary towels: this (pictured above) was one of seven boxes collected in the workplace of Twitter user Sarah Wyatt . While homeless shelters receive funding for condoms, there is currently no government funding to supply charities with aid for sanitary products . They said that they were surprised to find that approximately 26 per cent of people who access homelessness services are women. Oliver Frost adds that periods seem to be a forgotten issue when it comes to living on the streets. 'It's that for many people, it's never even crossed their minds. As we say on the campaign site "It doesn't bear thinking about… and that's the problem".' While there is public funding for condoms to be supplied to homeless shelters, there is no financial aid for tampons and sanitary towels. Nearly 81,000 people have signed a petition to lobby the government for better funding to buy sanitary care. Frost says he hopes that the petition will 'promise a more long term solution to the issue, and the amount of funding it would need is relatively small.' The group aims to present the petition to the Secretary of Health or if they reach their 150,000 signature target before a new government is elected, then to lobby Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of the NHS. A campaign video includes the voice of Patricia, who lived for six months on the streets of Brixton. She says she was forced to used ripped up cloth as a makeshift sanitary towel . Frost said donations are key to the campaign's success: 'For us, the hope is that #TheHomelessPeriod will become a platform for people wanting to help with donations. 'We've had people from around the country contact us with their own local initiatives and fundraisers for the campaign. Our side is in promoting those efforts and connecting them with other people who want to help.' Supporters have been dropping boxes of tampons and towels into their local homeless shelters, with one donor, Sarah Wyatt, so inspired that she has set up a crowd-funding page to encourage more people to donate. On her gofundme page, Wyatt says: 'I recently read an article about the lives of homeless women and the difficulties they face when they have their period. 'I had never really thought about it that way before, these women have little or no access to sanitary products. I decided to do something and did a collection in my workplace which got an amazing response.'
target: Campaign focuses on lack of sanitary care for women living rough .
  Video plays voice of homeless woman saying: 'Why does a woman have to rip up a cloth put between her to protect herself from bleeding?'
  Trio behind the project are Oliver Frost, Josie Shedden and Sara Bakhaty .
  80,000 people have already signed The Homeless Period petition .