No woman or girl should be held back by menstrual periods. Availability of sanitary towels and hygienic safe spaces in which to use them, the right to manage menstruation without shame or stigma MUST be a given for anyone who menstruates.
Yet for many, this is too far from being their reality. The subject of menstruation is taken as a taboo with many negative cultural attributes associated with it, including the idea that menstruating women and girls are ‘contaminated’, ‘dirty’ and ‘impure’ and for some the onset of periods means the girl is ready for marriage.
Period poverty is not just a potential health risk but also a stumbling block that deprives women and girls the right to engage in an already limited space in various opportunities like education, leadership, and business thereby affecting their entire lives
Women and girls in rural settings suffer most from stigma and lack of services and facilities to help them cope with the physical and psychological pains they undergo during their menstrual periods. They further face problems such as: inadequate preparations for young girls not yet experiencing menstrual hygiene, lack of or inadequate water to clean and wash the body, lack of materials for managing menstrual hygiene with sanitary towels being viewed not as a necessity but rather a luxury by the already poverty stricken rural community members who are barely surviving on one meal a day.
According to a UK based organization called Fields of Life, 86% of girls miss their learning time monthly as a result of menstrual periods. Missing days at school can lead girls to drop out which puts them at greater risk of child marriage, getting pregnant at a younger age, and sexual exploitation, among other things.
We believe that ending Period Poverty should be and must be the fight for everyone who has a mother, sister, aunt, wife, grandmother, granddaughter, sister-in-law, you name it. It should be the fight of our community leaders, men and boys, and governments to end it once and for all, yet this is not the case!!
It is on that basis that we at WAGRAU are working on creating School Girls’ Clubs that help girls learn about periods, training teachers, mothers and girls to make cheap, reusable sanitary pads, so as to ensure that every woman and girl can manage her periods with dignity.
Whereas we hold this as a very critically need that must be addressed as soon as possible, we are limited by lack of resources such as material needed to make the reusuable pads, and transport facilitation for very far areas.
Could you please be kind and donate to this program? Help a girl to stay in school and have a better change in life. Follow the link to help: https://wagrau.org/give/. Thank you.
