Sewing Sanitary Pads to create Livelihoods Support

Every month is a difficult time in the lives of most young girls... Aunt flow visits, hormones go everywhere, and if your lucky you have sanitary ware to enable you to stay clean, dignified and keep on with your school day. For many girls in our rural communities their monthly period is more challenging. Low incomes mean that buying the needed sanitary ware is tough..and sometimes unatainable. 

Today we celebrate a woman's right to being a woman, to our amazing female bodies that bleed each month, to our femininity, our solidarity, and our womens sewing project. Our ability to support these young girls from local primary schools with reusable sanitary pad packs so that they can reuse their washable pads and stay in school. We celebrate you our donors and supporters both on GlobalGiving as well as private donors, and we celebrate Aunt Flow - because together, she cannot keep us down! 

THANK you for supporting our sanitary pad program 

The last few months has had Ivy sewing sewing and sewing, as we tried to focus our education program and fundraising around Menstrual hygiene day. As so many of you know - our goal of sewing reusable pads has many aspects or reasons to it, and it goes beyond just sewing. it includes 

* an eco friendly menstrual option, so that single-use products such as pads don't clog up long drops, and dumpsites in our rural communities. Reusable pads are a green-period option.

* allows us to connect to young women, to break the taboo around menstrual hygiene and periods, and give them space to talk about it, share their concerns and experiences, and know that they have support 

* brings income generation to seamstresses that are part of the Nourish sewing project, including Ivy, and more recently Merlyn, who is set up at Nourish in our upcycled shipping container to sew sanitary pads and little colourful bags onsite. 

* gives school girls and young women dignity, as they have access to sanitary products, which previously they may not have been able to afford, so either missing school or using scraps of paper to try to get through each period. 

Covid-19 has had many impacts, and so many families in our rural communities are struggling with even more poverty as a result of the Lockdown, and soaring unemployment. More than ever buying pads or tampons is something that many families cannot afford, and we are so grateful for each of you that has sponsored, or connected with us, that allows us to sew and distribute these sanitary pads to these young women. 

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

For each pack of pads we distribute, a young woman's life is impacted for many years - for each of these girls, we speak - and say thank you. Pics of the distribution will follow in the next update.