This spring, we asked the GladRags community to help us supply girls in Zambia with cloth menstrual pads.  Tons of you stepped up to the challenge and donated over 300 GladRags to the Elizabeth Bowers Zambian Education Fund (aka Beth’s Girls).  Linda Bowers, Beth’s mom and executive directory, sent this email today to share with all of us the response from Zambia:

Our trip to Zambia was more successful than we could possibly have imagined! Beth’s Girls were thrilled with their GladRags packets, especially since they were prepared by the South Salem High School Beth’s Girls Club.  To think that women on the other side of the world were concerned about their health, safety, and school attendance touched them deeply. In addition, they were delighted by how beautiful the GladRags were, and knew immediately how to use them.  There were actually enough left over after each Beth’s Girl received her packet for each of the female teachers– who were also just thrilled with the gift.

The packets contained (everything donated):

Three GladRags
Pamphlet composed by SSHS Beth’s Girls
Plastic bag for used napkins
Soaps
Comb
Emory Boards
Toothbrush and Toothpaste (in separate plastic bag)

Thank you again for a most wonderful and appropriate gift for these extraordinary young women who are making a new future for themselves through education.  You simply cannot imagine what it means to them to be cared for by people halfway around the world.

• The Moon Cup: for All Your “Feminine Product” Needs is a great article with a helpful list of all the benefits and downsides to using the Moon Cup.
• The Women’s Rights section of change.org has a very interesting article presenting the idea– Subsidised Menstrual Pads: Good for Girls, Bad for the Plant.  What do you think?  Should the India government be supplying cloth pads or menstrual cups or do clean water concerns get in the way?  If you want to help girls in Zambia with their menstrual needs check out our donation partnership with Beth’s Girls.
• Diary of a Mom’s Green Topic #4: Going Paperless has a number a good ideas about different ways to have a paperless household.
•  A design/art student named Hiromi Ozaki invents a Menstruation Machine so that everyone can have the feeling of menstruation! (picture from the Wired article on the subject)

The GladRags community keeps on showing its generosity!  As of today, we are only 85 pads shy of our goal of 300 pads for Beth’s Girls.  With 300 pads, each scholarship girl will have three GladRags of her own.  But we only have one month left before the EBZEF founders make their annual trip to Zambia and bring the girls their new cloth pads!

If you haven’t already, please help us give Beth’s Girls the tools they need to succeed by donating pads through our website.  It’s quick and easy to donate, and we’ll be sharing photos and stories after the pads are given to the girls, so you’ll get to see the results of your generosity.  If you’ve already donated, thank you!  We hope you’ll pass this link on to your friends so they can support Beth’s Girls as well.

Wow!  In just over a month, the GladRags community has donated over 150 pads to send to girls in Zambia.  I almost can’t believe how overwhelmingly positive the response to our donation program with Beth’s Girls has been!

With your donations, we’re helping Zambian girls stay in school — one reusable pad at a time.  Haley W., a representative from Beth’s Girls (EBZEF), had this to say:

“According to UNICEF, a girl can miss up to 10 percent of her school days during menstruation. This is a critical problem in Africa where girls and women miss on average 50 days of school or work because they cannot afford effective sanitary pads. By donating reusable cloth pads to Beth’s Girls in Lumwana West, Zambia, Africa, you will be helping a young woman care for her sanitary needs in a safe, clean, and environmentally gentle manner that gives her the confidence to attend school and continue striving to reach her goals.”

Linda Bowers, a founder of EBZEF and Beth’s mom, hopes to have just three pads per girl by the time she makes her annual trip to Lumwana West to visit Beth’s Girls this July.  That’s 300 total pads — and you’ve already donated half!

Let’s keep this generosity going: help us reach 300 donated pads by July 1st to support Beth’s Girls!  Learn more about donating GladRags (or sewing your own pads to donate) on our website.  Thank you to everyone who has already donated!  You have made a huge difference in the life of a Zambian girl!

We have a short and sweet Menstrual Monday today.  Enjoy!

• The SF Weekly Heartless Doll brings us a helpful public service announcement with Dudes of the World: Menstruation Does Not Make Women Insane.
• A Columbus radio station brings us 5 Fab Essential Earth Day Accessories including the menstrual cup!  See picture to the right for another fab accessory.

Also, we would like to thank everyone who has donated pads to Beth’s Girls so far.  We already have almost 100 pads to give to girls in need in Zambia!  But we always need more.  Read about why you should donate here.

We know the GladRags community does much more than use alternative menstrual products.  As a group we are doing so many things to keep our planet green, from carpooling and composting to gardening and going organic!  So thank you, for everything you do to keep our planet green and beautiful!

This Earth Day, we hope you’ll help us on a new mission: providing cloth pads to girls in Africa through the Elizabeth Bowers Zambian Education Fund (EBZEF), an organization which strives to help Zambian girls stay in school and achieve their dreams.  The recipients of EBZEF’s scholarship assistance call themselves “Beth’s Girls” and have many hopes for the future — and the confidence that they will make their visions come true!

Many of us know already that when girls lack adequate menstrual supplies, they are often unable to complete their educations.  But there’s more to the story: when disposable products are donated to these girls in need, their disposal can be problematic for the local waste system.  For example, in northern Zambia garbage is piled up and periodically burned.  If every woman in the area was contributing their used menstrual supplies, imagine the sudden swell in garbage!

Not to mention the fact that the donation of disposables requires ongoing shipments of new products; with the donation of cloth pads instead, once a girl has enough cloth pads for her cycle, she won’t need to rely on outside donors every month.

GladRags is so excited to be working with EBZEF, and hope you will help a girl in Zambia follow her dreams by clicking here to learn more about how to donate cloth pads.  Forty GladRags Day Pads  have already been donated to Beth’s Girls by caring members of our community — we hope you will join them in their generosity!