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!

A number of women in the GladRags community have contacted us recently and asked us to focus on the issue of incontinence.  While I can’t claim to be an expert on the topic, I’ve done a little research and hope I can shed some light on what incontinence is and what can be done about it.  I encourage anyone with a deeper knowledge of the topic to comment and tell us more!

To begin with, let’s define incontinence for the purpose of this blog post.  There are all kinds of incontinence, from urge to functional, but the type that affects the most women is called stress incontinence.  The symptoms of stress incontinence include leaking urine when coughing, sneezing, laughing, or during other times of physical activity.

So why does this happen to some women but not others?  Stress incontinence is generally caused by a weakening of the pelvic floor muscles, which help support your bladder.  Pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause all cause physical and hormonal changes in our bodies which can lead to weakened pelvic floor muscles — and leaking urine when someone tells a particularly funny joke!

Fortunately, there are several natural, non-invasive ways to treat stress incontinence.  First, a doctor might recommend behavioral changes such as weight loss, quitting smoking, and avoiding caffeine and spicy foods.  Being overweight, smoking (and coughing!), and certain foods can all put stress on your bladder, causing leakage.  Then, the doctor may suggest the most common treatment for stress incontinence: Kegel exercises.

Kegel exercises involve contracting and relaxing the muscles of the pelvic floor in order to increase strength.  And they’re not just useful for women suffering from stress incontinence — Kegels are helpful to women preparing for childbirth, and to improve sexual experiences.  We recommend the Energie Kegel Exerciser, by the way!

I was surprised at how difficult it was to find out exactly how many women suffer from stress incontinence.  Most sources were vague, but cited stress incontinence as a common problem that “millions” of American women experience.  Are the numbers vague because women are too embarrassed to see a doctor, or assume that stress incontinence is just something they have to live with?

Working at GladRags, I’ve learned that stress incontinence is quite common in women of all ages.  We frequently receive letters from women who wear our pads daily due to incontinence, and are grateful for the comfort factor (imagine having to wear plasticky disposables every day!).  While GladRags may not work for someone with full loss of bladder control, we hear all the time that our Day Pads and Pantyliners are great solutions for women with occasional light leaks.

For more information on stress incontinence, visit these links:

Urinary Incontinence: Millions of Women Suffer in Silence

Stress Incontinence (National Institutes of Health)

Urinary Incontinence in Women  (Health)

Urinary Incontinence in Women (NKUDIC)

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.

Izzy, a volunteer for the Nepal Women and Children Service Society, recently contacted us about donating GladRags to orphaned girls.  Here’s her description of life for the Nepalese children she works with, and why cloth pads are greatly needed:

The Nepal Women and Children Service Society (NWCSS) is a local co-operative aiming to rescue and support deprived women and children. Established in 2002, the group opened an orphanage in the Jorpati district of Kathmandu. Although the NWCSS are working hard to fund it, this orphanage is in dire need of external donations to offer the children a quality of life beyond the basic necessities.

For the last two years, I have volunteered at the orphanage. The living conditions of the children are incomprehensible to any measurement we might make, but this is not what defines them. Each day, I am greeted by cheeky smiles and requests for chewing gum. They are kids. Despite their desolate environment, they have retained the curiosity and joy we hope for in children. My goal in working with the NWCSS is to maintain that attitude and optimistic view of life.

More than half of the 25 children are girls, many of whom are coming into adolescence. Eight of the fourteen girls are in need of menstrual products. On my last visit, I learned that the eldest girl had been given an old towel to use as a sanitary napkin. As you can imagine, this single towel is hardly a sufficient, hygienic or comfortable means for dealing with menstruation. Another volunteer purchased a small supply of disposable pads for the girls but this is not a long term solution. Aside from the cost of disposable pads being high, there is also no hygienic way of disposing of the pads. The waste from the orphanage is collected in garbage cans and dumped 20 feet from the rear of the home. The heap attracts the expected stray animals and rodents, and is regularly set on fire, the fumes engulfing the orphanage.

You can learn more about the orphanage at this volunteer-run website and easily donate pads through the GladRags website.  Visit our donation page to learn how — you can even sew your own! Thank you for doing your part to ensure that girls everywhere have access to safe, clean, and comfortable menstrual supplies!

• Toni Weschler, author of Taking Charge of Your Fertility: The Definitive Guide to Natural Birth Control, Pregnancy Achievement and Reproductive Health, answers a few questions about menstruation on Scarleteen in Talking Menstruation with Toni.
• Lani Beloso, an artist with menorrhagia paints canvases with her own menstrual blood (see photo).  Read more about how she sees her work as catharsis and art in this article on Jezebel.
• The Huffington writes about reusables in How to Green Your Period!  Negative comments ensue.  Be sure to change that by posting about how much you love GladRags or your menstrual cup!
• The Diva Cup, Race, and Blood by Nuñez Daughter brings up some thought-provoking ideas about race, feminism, and alternative menstrual products.

Giveaways:

Win a 3-pack of the Color Cotton GladRags from the Rent Tent Movie!  Also check out their site; we can’t wait to see this film!