Finishing up 2015

I was impressed that we were able to have even a skeleton crew at our December 20th workday, so close to Christmas.  A baker's dozen of us worked on non-construction tasks, such as pressing, quality-checking and folding liners, folding underwear, cutting out shields, affixing snaps to sewn shields, sewing labels on bags, etc.

We have a batch of 75 kits going to Kenya in early January.  My goal is always to have all the bags in a distribution be made of different fabrics.  These kits are of such a personal nature, I like to reduce the chances of the recipients getting them mixed up.  I think we're going to meet that goal this time around.

Thank you so much for all of your interest and support for Days for Girls this year.  Some accomplishments for 2015:

We have a very interesting and fun group of folks who have found us, one way or another, who gather to work at Our Sewing Room each month.  Please join us when you can!  A few wonderful women drive an hour or more each way to volunteer.

We sent kits and components to girls and women in 4 African countries--Kenya, Ghana, Uganda and Zimbabwe.

The status for our local group has been changed from team to Chapter!

We participated successfully in fundraisers via Crowdrise, and raised significant dollars from our generous supporters to purchase supplies.

We will continue to meet at Our Sewing Room on the third Sunday of each month.  I so appreciate Mary Jo and Don being willing to open up the wonderful facility for us!  We are extremely lucky to have such a perfect room to work in.

My goal for our chapter for 2016 is to focus on quality, each of us checking our work to ascertain that it meets all of the guidelines.  I'd like all the life-changing kits that come from our Chapter to be as close to perfect as humanly possible.  We want every one of these components to be beautiful, well-sewn, the right size,  and in suitable patterns and colors.  Should we ever have to make a choice, it would definitely be quality over quantity.

Here's a short video you might enjoy.

Days for Girls University in Uganda

Joseph Mawejje

It's Giving Tuesday!  There are so many worthy causes that could use your donations today and every day.  Here's one--a fundraiser for a man to attend Days for Girls University in Uganda.  He wants to learn to make the kits, set up an enterprise, and train others.  It costs $1313. to attend.  Donations of any size help, but just for reference, 101 people donating $13 would get him there.  I just did.

On GIVING TUESDAY consider supporting Joseph Mawejje of Generation Youth Uganda. He is worthy of DFG Enterprise Training at DFG University in Uganda, so that he may gain important business skills and materials needed to ensure success!

In the US through Crowdrise:
https://www.crowdrise.com/sponsorjose…/fundraiser/pauladavid

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FROM FLORIDA:

Here's an article about Days for Girls from the University of Florida.

Home / University of Florida / Days for Girls International CEO Speaks on Sustainable Feminine Hygiene

Days for Girls International CEO Speaks on Sustainable Feminine Hygiene

By Zee Krstic

October 30, 2015 University of Florida

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It was 2:30 a.m. when Celeste Mergens first thought of a question that would later change her life.

“How do you ask what the girls are doing for feminine hygiene?” she asked the audience when speaking recently at the University of Florida.

It came to her after visiting slums in Kibera, Kenya, where she worked in an orphanage housing over 400 children.

“They wait in their rooms while sitting on a piece of cardboard” she said. “How do you possibly wait in your room with 50 other people?”

This is the issue Mergens, founder and CEO of Days for Girls International, has strived to eliminate in the seven years since founding the organization in 2008. Among its various humanitarian efforts, Days for Girls is committed to a sustainable solution to the lack of feminine hygiene products in developing nations, Mergens said.

Celeste Mergens shows the audience a sustainable pad at the Bob Graham Center for Public Service Thursday evening. The pads cost anywhere from $6 to $10 depending on the country in which they are made, and are packaged with educational materials on feminine hygiene and proper maintenance. (Zee Krstic/WUFT News)

Days for Girls has an international model for manufacturing resuable menstruation pads from fabric. The group has more than 450 chapters in 14 different countries and has a goal of reaching “every girl, everywhere, period” by 2022, Mergens shared with those in attendance.

Days for Girls has given products to more than 200,000 women, and the group has used their feedback to create over 27 models of the pad, resulting in the version currently used today.

Many of the pads go to impoverished girls whose lack of access to feminine products causes problems beyond just hygiene. Some are sexually exploited by school teachers and administration when seeking feminine hygiene products, Mergens said.

Girls who stay home during menstruation before eventually dropping out are part of the root of poverty in third-world countries, she said.

“[The pad] helps a girl stay in school with dignity and health and not use the things so often resorted to,” said Mergens, which often include bark, leaves, cornhusks, stones, newspaper and mattress stuffing.

Mergens emphasized the issue doesn’t only happen in developing countries, but it also happens here in the United States.

“It’s not just somewhere else. It’s right here in your community, I promise. Anywhere where someone has the choice between food and hygiene, food wins,” said Mergens, who has distributed the organization’s hygiene products through chapters in New York City, Chicago and New Orleans.

Even with the organization’s efforts, Mergens believes the issue of sustainable and accessible feminine hygiene products can’t be answered without a change in public perception.

“We’re too afraid to talk about menstruation. We would rather talk about diarrhea than menstruation,” she said. “In fact, none of us came into this world without menstruation happening. What we’re up to is so much more than giving dignity, health and resources.”

Days for Girls depends on crucial volunteer support, Mergens said, including Gainesville’s own Girl Scouts Troupe 733, which has locally supported the cause over the last year.

In addition to holding ‘Sew-a-Thons’ at Santa Fe College’s Perry Center throughout the year, Radha Selvester, one of the troop’s leaders, is part of a group of 10 that will travel to Kenya Dec. 17-30.

Selvester has fundraised more than $2,500 for supplies, such as sewing machines, to bring to Kenya through Crowdsource.

The group, including four local girls and two UF students, will establish a local Sewing and Health Enterprise in Tharaka Nithi, one of the smallest and most rural counties in Kenya, Selvester said. Their goal is to teach women how to make the pads on their own, she said.

Celeste Mergens (center) poses for a photo while at an educational seminar. “The poverty cycle can be broken while the girls are still in school, we know that from data all over the world,” she said, referencing data from agriculturalist Dr. Pedro Sanchez. Photo courtesy of Celeste Mergens.

“You might think it’s okay to sit at home, but you’re ostracized,” said Selvester.

For 21-year-old Ginnie Lin, a Gainesville native in her third year at UF, attending the event opened her eyes to the issue.

“Girls are the ones who are receiving and using these hygiene things,” she said. “To have that pretty pad to use for something that is so ugly in so many cultures is so important.”

Mergens presented her lecture, “Turning Passion Into Action,” in cooperation with the Bob Graham Center for Public Service and the Alachua County Medical Society.

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Feminine Hygiene issues for the Syrian Refugees

I'd like to share with you an article about the Syrian refugees that was in the October Ms. magazine newsletter.

The Syrian Refugee Struggle No One’s Talking About

October 20, 2015 by Marni Sommer | 13 Comments

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Yesterday’s New York Times ran a story about how migrants rushing to cross Europe, though resourceful and adaptable, are facing a new threat they can’t evade: winter. But there is another thing that the girls and women among the migrants cannot avoid, and that is their monthly menstruation. Few among us would grab extra underwear and sanitary pads when fleeing our homeland with our dearest life possessions on our backs, and we do not yet know enough about the lived experiences of this mass of migrating humanity and the specific challenges facing the adolescent girls and women among them. That’s why it is essential to understand what governments, and the humanitarian response community, are doing to meet the menstrual-related needs of this population.

Mentioning menstruation in light of the many trials and dangers confronting the migrants (i.e. hostile armed guards, large walls being rapidly constructed at borders, crossing oceans in shaky rafts, the arrival of winter) may appear to be at best, irrelevant, and at worst, unimportant. I would argue that it is neither.

When large masses of humanity are displaced or on the move, privacy is a rare commodity, and material items are limited to what can be carried on one’s back. It is very difficult to imagine how girls and women are able to manage menstrual blood flow as they walk endlessly across fields or alongside train tracks without easy access to toilets for changing sanitary materials, or water for washing blood off their hands and bodies. It is similarly hard to imagine how they can avoid humiliating menstrual stains on their limited clothing supply when packed onto platforms in train stations not designed for huge numbers of people to live in for extended periods, or when crowded onto boats for days or hours at a time. It is also unclear where girls and women are supposed to purchase or find the sanitary supplies they need when on the road for days or months at a time, frequently in towns or cities hostile to their presence. Or pain killers to relieve menstrual cramps as they march, and help them to endure. Few news reports so far have spoken to this issue, although we hear reports of facilities being established in border areas, with occasional mention of the provision of water.

When generous volunteers show up at train stations and border crossings with boxes of donated goods, the handouts often include food items, clothing, soap and other essential items in short supply. It is less clear if people think to include sanitary pads, tampons or other materials needed by menstruating girls and women on the move. This might include changes of underwear, soap and buckets for washing out stains. We do know that some members of the public have risen to the occasion, including women’s groups in the U.K. and Germany who have been gathering sanitary pads and other items needed for menstrual management to distribute to the migrants. However, as we recently learned, sanitary pads are not one of the approved goods that girls and women can purchase with vouchers in the refugee camps in Jordan.

Although half the world’s population is female, ongoing taboos hinder open discussion about this very basic physiological function, and strong coordinated responses are required to meet the needs of girls and women in a given crisis, be it migrants crossing Europe or displaced people across sub-Saharan Africa. While we talk openly about building latrines in displacement camps to prevent the spread of infectious disease, we talk much less comfortably about how to assure that girls and women have private, safe spaces for managing their periods, and the sanitary materials they need, so that they can engage in activities essential for their survival—such as standing in line for food, or continuing their trek to freedom and safety across foreign lands.

This issue is not new or novel to the migrants crossing Europe, and there are growing efforts to speak more openly about menstrual management in order to assist girls and women in emergency contexts. When renewed fighting erupts in South Sudan or an earthquake strikes in Pakistan, the humanitarian response community arrives and focuses on assuring access to water, basic sanitation and shelter. They sometimes also address the needs of menstruating girls and women, either indirectly through the building of latrines, or directly through the building of separate toilets for girls and women, the construction of private washing stations, or the handing out of kits that include underwear, soap, buckets and sanitary pads or cloths.

However, the emergency community still lacks standardized measures for assessing girls’ and women’s menstrual-related needs, and for monitoring responses to assure they are effective. So for example, was only one kit handed out to a family with five daughters and are there enough supplies of cloths, underwear and pads for all the girls and women of reproductive age in the family? Are the latrines constructed in a location that girls and women can access safely? And is there water located inside the stalls to assure they can rinse out menstrual stains without embarrassment?

While there is growing interest to engage on menstrual management in emergencies, as exemplified by the work being done by Oxfam, Save the Children and UNICEF, these efforts still face challenges since there is a lack of standardized guidance and no coordinating mechanisms in a given emergency.

Fortunately, more attention is being paid to developing systematic responses to menstrual management in emergencies. The International Federation of the Red Cross has begun studyingthe effectiveness of the distribution of the kits containing materials intended to enable menstrual hygiene management and to assure the right contents are incorporated for a given emergency. More recently, the International Rescue Committee and Columbia University initiated a project in which they will partner together with the larger humanitarian response community to develop a streamlined toolkit for improving response to menstrual hygiene management in emergencies.

There is still a long way to go in ensuring girls and women can manage their menstrual periods with dignity, safety and privacy in difficult circumstances of displacement and mass migration. However the simple act of overcoming the taboo to openly talking asking about menstrual management needs in such circumstances would be a great place to start. It opens the door to actually doing something.

If you’d like to donate to an organization responding to menstrual hygiene needs in humanitarian emergencies, try The International Rescue Committee, Oxfam, Save the Children or UNICEF.

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Photo via Shutterstock

Marni Sommer is an associate professor of sociomedical sciences at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University, and a public voices fellow with The OpEd Project. She has conducted research with girls on menstruation in Tanzania, Ghana, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Pakistan, and publishes books for girls in low-income countries about puberty and menstruation. 

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