Let's Get Our Knickers in a Twist!

An interview with the student raising awareness of 'pant poverty'

Ella Townson
13th May 2024
Image credit: Serena Chamberlain
Letsgetourknickersinatwist is a female-led charitable organization, set up by Durham University student Serena Chamberlain, that raises money toward knickers for vulnerable women. I had the chance to talk with Serena about her work and how students across the country can get involved.

What inspired you to create Letsgetourknickersinatwist?

“I have always been interested in female empowerment...I’m not going to lie; my school wasn’t very progressive... it was very traditional and they wanted everyone to go down the same path.  They didn’t like that I’d call something out if I thought it was wrong.”

“My mum is also such a superwoman, always volunteering and supporting women’s refuges. I’ve definitely been brought up in an empowering environment. There’s a women’s refuge about half an hour away from me. I started volunteering there at 15. They let me sit in on kind of everything. They let me sit and listen. I was so young, but they were so honest about how this is the real world. I heard some really horrible, horrible stories, but again this is the reality of what’s happening. You hear the statistics about domestic abuse and you always think that this stuff is only happening on the other side of the world, but it’s not. I live in a really lovely area in the countryside where everyone thinks everything is perfect, but stuff is happening only twenty minutes away from where you live. People are so blinded to it.”

Serena went on to discuss how the women she met at refuges were always asking for knickers. The refuges were consistently running low on underwear. Serena’s mum then decided to do a fundraising event because of the desperation for knickers. Serena believes that the demand for underwear is such a big issue simply because it’s a lot easier for people to donate things like old hoodies, but getting people to spend money on new items is difficult. Some don’t have the spare money and many also don’t know that ‘pant poverty’ is such a huge problem in this country. Therefore, part of what Serena’s organization seeks to do is raise awareness. Serena would help her mum at these events, which they referred to as ‘pants parties’, within their community. When Serena then went to university to study Anthropology and Sociology, she found herself with a lot of spare time and so in the summer of her first year, she considered running her own campaigns to raise money for knickers. The organization started off as a donation drive until Serena thought of the catchy name Letsgetourknickersinatwist. Once she came up with this name, she knew it was something she just had to do. Thus far, Letsgetourknickersinatwist has mainly been a social media campaign, however the ‘pants parties’ are also integral to its success. At these parties, which are sometimes held by university societies, attendees wear pretty underwear and bring along new pants to donate, or they pay money toward new pants for vulnerable women.

the demand for underwear is such a big issue simply because it’s a lot easier for people to donate things like old hoodies, but getting people to spend money on new items is difficult

Serena: “The reaction from everyone was just so amazing and generous right from the beginning. In the initial GoFundMe we raised a grand or something. I kind of just kept it gong on Instagram with the weekly bum counts. It became really fun to go and pick up all the pants with all the girls.”

What is ‘pant poverty’?

I think I have kind of made the term myself aha. I just describe it as the fact that over 500 million girls and women around the world don’t have access to any underwear. That’s let alone people who only have one or two pairs. I read an article recently about refugees which broke my heart and it said that 60% of female refugees don’t have access to underwear. It’s horrific. We’re mainly based in the UK because I love to donate the pants in the town/city that the events are held and that way we get to see the impact. We all know how great it feels to put on a pretty, sexy pair of underwear and we’ve been able to provide women with that feeling. We’ve had people break down who haven’t had a new pair of knickers since they were a little girl. Knickers are for health and hygiene, but there’s also an empowerment aspect. There are quite a few charities which focus on period poverty, which is amazing, but we mainly focus on underwear because there are other charities that focus on that. You can’t utilise period products effectively if you don’t have underwear.”

Where do you see the organization being in a year’s time?

“Part of me doesn’t really know. I thought it was going to stay stagnant, but it hasn’t and hopefully the more people we can get sharing our story (like Heather Bowling) the more it will grow. We currently don’t have charity status, we’re a charity campaign...it’s an incredibly long process. I’m really hoping that next year that’ll be sorted. I’d love to get more involved with the women that the pants go to, which is sometimes hard with confidentiality. There is unfortunately a sense of shame that some women feel when asking for underwear and so it sometimes works better for them to keep their privacy. I’m also desperate to get pants out to Gaza and other places experiencing humanitarian crises. The need in Gaza is dire, but I’m not really sure how to get pants out there at the moment considering how supplies are being blocked. Seeing all of the aid workers that have been killed just shows how difficult it is to get aid through, but that’s what I’d really love to do. We currently help at a Durham Refugees kids club. We donate to them. I’d like to continue doing things like that, widening our impact.” Serena doesn’t have a team, although she does have friends helping her to educate people and emailing influencers to collaborate with. In order to grow this campaign even further, she needs the help of fellow students. You can apply to be an ambassador/rep (which should involve about 4 hours a week of your time), or simply throw a ‘pants party’ in your area and donate to the GoFundMe. You can find templates and other resources online, just take a look at @letsgetourknickersinatwist on Instagram and TikTok, or go to their website Lets get our knickers in a twist |

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