Empower Women and Girls through Menstrual Health

Greetings from Burkina Faso!

We have some very exciting news to share about our MHM Project in Burkina Faso to empower high school girls.

1. First of all, Burkina's Ministry of Education and its Division of Leadership in Promoting Inclusive Education, Girls' Education and Gender, together with UNICEF, have invited BARKA to present at a National Conference to share the best practices and results of the project you helped to bring into this world in 2017!
2. For the project's next phase, we are partnering with an NGO that specilizes in Menstrual Cups. BARKA is poised to become the first NGO in Burkina Faso to distribute meenstrual cups to girls and women. Cups are a relatively new technology, still catching on in western society. There have been several successful implementations of using cups in MHM projects in Africa. As we make plans to scale up in order to reach our revised goal of 10,000 girls and women, our project will be one of the first major MHM projects integrating cup distribution in West Africa. Whoa!!
3. Beginning in April, BARKA will begin working with a construction company to build MHM-adpated latrines ("MHM cabins") in two high schools in Fada N'Gourma. These will include a safe and private space where girls in school can take care of their menstrual needs.  Basic resources such as clean water, soap, washcloths, a place to sit, a sink to wash clothes if necessary, a lock on the door, and a discrete place to discard waste will be included in our MHM Cabins. The inside will be tiled and beautiful. Together with the girls who will make use of it, we will paint the outside with empowering images of women's strength and beauty. This is another innovation within this project, because there is nothing like an MHM cabin in Burkina, maybe the world, and it is about time!
4. Also in this next phase of the MHM project, BARKA will work with ALL students in both high schools (5000 students total) to create "school hygiene clubs" to better understand basic hygiene, and also to clean up the local environment of the school itself... that includes keeping the latrines clean and well-maintained.

We clearly have a lot of work ahead of us before the school year is out. But with your support, we know we can achieve our ambitious goals.

Now that we're in 2018, please consider renewing your financial support for this important project at this critical time.

Thank you for being with us, and helping to empower so many girls and women in Burkina Faso through menstrual hygiene management!

Barka!!

Links:

• BARKA's MHM project page