We’re excited to announce our new partnership with Empower Women in Africa! Together, we hope to bring educational and economic opportunities to girls and women in rural Africa. And you can help: by purchasing an Empower Kit to be given to a girl in need, you can help her complete her education and achieve her dreams!

Here’s Lori, founder of EWA, to share with you the successes of their first year:

“Empower Women in Africa was founded in February 2011 with the vision of providing a pathway to education for girls throughout rural Africa. To accomplish this, we provide scholarships to girls living in poverty and showing promise in the classroom, and by providing reusable cloth menstrual pads so there is not a struggle every month to find sanitary products with limited funds.

In our first year, we have been able to provide scholarships to five girls at Andara Combined School in Namibia. These scholarships cover every cost that comes along with their education from their school fees, school uniform and even a food stipend for their families when good grades are achieved to encourage the family to take an interest in their daughter’s education.

We have also been instrumental in getting over 2200 cloth menstrual pads to girls in Namibia and Uganda. The recipients have ranged from an orphanage with Show Mercy International, schools, conferences and after school clubs. Thanks to GladRags, Days for Girls and a growing population of volunteers for getting all of the pads sewn.

In 2012, we’re excited to be working with GladRags to be their exclusive pad donation partner. Because of their commitment to our cause, our pad program is expected to at least double in our second year! This also opens up more time to focus on our scholarship program and we already have five more girls selected for sponsorship!”

We first met Helen in her guest post about the Female Hygiene program she’s working on in Kenya as part of her Peace Corps Volunteer position. Below is an update on how the project is going!

Hello GladRags readers! We’ve started our sanitary pads educational program this week here in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. We started with a small group of ten girls from Omiro Mixed Secondary School. This school was priority number one due to the girl’s daily interactions with the opposite sex (some schools in our location are female only). The schools has 110 females enrolled, so we are planning on 4 more groups of 25 girls before the term ends in August.

We discussed the high cost of disposable pads and then I explained about the donations made so they could have the materials to make their own re-usable pads, they are very grateful. Here is an online album that I will update regularly with photos of the project: https://picasaweb.google.com/mcguirkhelen/FemaleHygeine . The girls were so excited to work on this project and began asking many questions relevant to the subject. More to come soon, as the project is quickly gaining momentum!

Helen

Want to help other women in Africa gain access to reusable pads? Click here to learn how you can donate GladRags to women and girls in Zimbabwe!

Izzy V., who brought 50 donated GladRags with her to Nepal, emailed us about how the girls received their new pads. Want to help other girls and women across the world? Click here to learn about our current donation program.

I recently returned from a few months in Nepal… and my girls were so happy (in private) to receive the pads. I know for them it is a huge relief to not have to rely on future volunteers for disposables. Two of the girls [note from GladRags: we decided only to use their first initial] wrote thank you’s which are quite tattered, so if you do not mind I will transcribe them -

Dear GladRags,
Hi, I am S. I live in an Orphanage. My orphanage is named NWCSS. I read in class 7. I like red colour. In future I would like to be a teacher. My birthday is October 28th.
At last I would like to say that! Thank you!
(S, age 13)

Dear GladRags,
I am R. from orphanage. I read in grade 8. My best color is red and I would like to a singer in my future. My birthday is June 28th. At last I would like to say that I thank you (for those things)*.

(R, age 14, * words in parenthesis were crossed out however i found it a bit funny myself, so why not include it.)

This is Izzy again! I am so thankful for your generosity, and while the girls were shy about receiving their gift, I could see that they were grateful. I did follow up a few times just with a simple inquiry of how the pads were working, and the response was positive.

A second orphanage I work with also has a women’s sewing program that they started just as I was leaving. I am thinking that maybe when I return reusable pads could be a project for them to think about.

I cannot say thank you enough, and as I have said before, if anyone from your company ever wants a tour of Nepal just let me know!

Hello fellow bloggers of GladRags! I’m a US Peace Corps Public Health Volunteer serving in the Nyanza Province of Kenya. My home is a small village on the Kisii-Kisumu road called Mikai. After two months of in-country training I was partnered with a small community based organization called Kakelo Based Integrated Support Project. We focus on supporting those community members affected by the HIV/AIDS epidemic, including those living positive, widows, orphans, and caretakers of these people. I love working with my organization, and feel blessed everyday that I’ve been given this wonderful opportunity.

Upon arriving at my site 9 months ago I was questioned by members with an urgent need for our girls to stay in school. We immediately identified the main reasons why girls drop out of school, menstruation being one and early pregnancy being another, and set forth to correct it. We found that girls miss an average of five days of school per month due to menstruation, and early pregnancy is a shocking epidemic.

The Female Hygiene program consists of teaching each in-school girl at menstruation age in our Kakelo Location how to easily and cheaply make her own re-useable sanitary pads using locally available materials. We will also supplement each activity with correct information about how to track menstruation, what is physically happening to a woman’s body during puberty, and healthy sexual education. The sustainable and most important aspect of this project is I’ll be working with female community health workers who will help me develop the educational aspect and insure the continuance of the program well after my service is over.

The project has recently received all the donations needed to start, which is a wonderful surprise for everyone at my organization! Our next step is to buy the materials and I’ll start teaching the women I’m working with how to make the pads. We’ll then develop the education program together and start visiting schools one at a time, with groups of 10 girls at a time. Even though the project has been fully funded we still want the word to get out that hundreds of thousands of girls don’t have the proper hygiene and sexual health education to keep themselves safe from early pregnancy and continue their education. We want to thank GladRags and the readers of this blog for listening to our story. I’ll be sending updates as the project starts to keep everyone informed, so please stay tuned!

Asanteni sana tena,

Helen McGuirk

Blog: http://mcguirkhelen.blogspot.com/

Web Album: https://picasaweb.google.com/mcguirkhelen/Kenya#

Want to help other women in Africa gain access to reusable pads? Click here to learn how you can donate GladRags to women and girls in Uganda!

Lisa Tuttle shared this photo with us of her demonstrating how to use GladRags to schoolgirls in Ghana. The GladRags community donated over 250 pads to the Good Shepherd Orphanage and School for these girls in need! You can view the rest of the photos here.

Want to help? We’re currently working to provide 150 women in Uganda with reusable pads. Click here to learn more and donate!

Ndangi. Natumera. Thank you.

Those words can’t begin to express the gratitude I have for everyone who has supported, donated, passed on my emails and messages to help the girls at Andara Combined School continue their education beyond puberty. Without your generous gifts this holiday season, young girls would continue to struggle to find pads during their periods each month, sometimes not succeeding and having to miss school.

You’ve truly helped to make a lasting difference for a group of incredible young women hoping to get an education and improve their living conditions.

Have a wonderful holiday season and a very happy New Year.

Lori

“So you see, by this time, we could laugh together because we understood each other very well.” Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses

The donation program for Andara Combined School is coming to a close with the end of 2010.  Please consider donating now or donating to our next group beginning in January 2011.  Thank you to everyone who has already donated!

Thank you to everyone who donated GladRags pads to Haitian women earlier this year!  Midwife Jennifer S. shared the email and photo below with us about her work with Midwives for Haiti.  Jennifer, we applaud your generous spirit!  Thank you for making this possible.

I just got back late last night from Haiti and as you can imagine I had an amazing trip with Midwives for Haiti.  They work mostly out of the central plateau in Hinche.  Midwives for Haiti’s main goal is educating midwife auxillaries (notch above trained birthing assistants) to serve the women of Haiti.  The current class – class 3 – was just getting ready to graduate.  My job was to be a support for them, and to help keep the midwifery services going while they had off preparing for graduation.  There were a lot of mobile prenatal clinics that I attended at first as I got my feet wet.  We saw 45-60 women at each clinic.  For almost half the women, it was their one and only prenatal visit their entire pregnancy.  Most women deliver at home, most unattended (thus the need for the midwives) so the “new mommies” packets I made with many of the supplies you donated were very very much appreciated — diapers, soap, diaper pins, baby blankets, cloth menstrual pads — all precious items to these very poor families.  Thank you so much.  We also treated everyone for malaria and worms as well as anemia and passed out lots of prenatal vitamins — all purchased with funds many of you assisted me with — I thank you again.

This was my first time in Haiti and it was amazing.  I also ended up doing a lot of public health education about cholera out in the villages and worked a lot of nights in the cholera tents in Hinche.  It got a bit scary with the riots the beginning of this week, but I was working along with JP/HRO and PIH two very well funded and well supported organizations and was kept safe while we continued to provide care.  I also volunteered at the Azili in Hinche — this is an asylum run by Mother Teresa’s nuns — I was with the very ill children — starving, TB, etc — just holding them and helping with feedings — it was very moving.  I was in L&D, caught a baby, helped with a 16wk loss in the cholera tents and a woman who had an eclamptic seizure, met the midwife grads and many many more experiences.

As you can see I was really busy and now I am exhausted and trying to get back into the swing of things at the birth center, feeling a bit overwhelmed.  I think you all so very much for your love and support and prayers.  Having this opportunity to work in Haiti was something I have always wanted to do and now I will never forget.  I thank you for all the women we helped this last two weeks.

For most of us, when a pregnant woman goes into labor, it’s a joyous event for her friends and family.  We take it for granted that childbirth is safe; that not only will we have a new baby in our lives but that the mother will still be there tomorrow to take care of it.

In Haiti, a country recently ravaged by natural disasters, it’s a different story.  Due to a lack of prenatal care and the fact that the majority of deliveries are done by untrained individuals, Haiti has the highest infant and maternal mortality rates in the western hemisphere.

That’s where Midwives for Haiti comes in.  Started by certified nurse-midwives, they “believe every woman in this world deserves the knowledge and care to have a safe pregnancy and birth.”  By providing training and resources to wome

n in the community, Midwives for Haiti hopes to improve access to skilled care for pregnant women and ensure that more mothers and babies survive.

Now, Midwives in Haiti is asking for your help.  Already limited supplies have become even more scarce since January’s earthquake, and women must use old rags (if anything) to collect postpartum bleeding.  Certified nurse midwife Jennifer S., who is traveling to Haiti in November, is assembling kits for new mothers that will include cloth diapers, a blanket, soap, a onesie for the baby, and cloth menstrual pads.  Please help her reach her goal of bringing 50 cloth pads with her to these women in need by donating today!

Want to learn more?  Read these two amazing stories by volunteer midwives:

• An American Midwife in Haiti

• Birth by headlamp in Hinche, Haiti

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.

• Green Upgrader sings some praises in Reusable Menstrual Products Help Reduce Waste, Save Money.

• A study finds that the presence of older brothers delays menstruation in girls.  Learn more about why they think that is and how it relates to sexual activity here.

• I’ve always wondered What Causes Digestive Issues During Menstrual Periods.  And now I know!
• Ashley at Domestic Chaos reviews cloth pads and the Instead and rates them according to effectiveness and comfort.
• A new study finds a link between stress and worse PMS symptoms.
• Life on Health brings us many reasons to start using menstrual cups in Wondering How To Forget About Menstrual Pains & Discomfort Of Constant Tampon Or Pad Changing? Menstrual Cups!
• Check out this laughable recent ad for douching How to Ask for a Raise: First, Wash Your Vagina.  If only we could all feel comfortable with our own bodies silly shaming ads like this would not be a problem!
• Reasons to use a menstrual cup, let blogger Delta S count the ways.

About GladRags:

• Thanks to everyone who donated to our campaign for an orphanage in Nepal!  Learn more about the orphanage and our donation campaign here.
• You can see the TigerMama crew sporting their new GladRags pins in the picture to the right! Want one of your own? Sign up to be a GladRags Guerrilla!