“ One of the mentors in our mothers group is a midwife down at the hospital and she introduced this program to our group. We had a meeting and we learnt how to sew all these kits up.
The program is called ‘Days for Girls’ and its basically providing girls and new mums in third world countries with reusable sanitary and also post-partum kits which involves sewing a liner and a shield that look colourful and not your stereotypical sanitary wear. These ones here are going to Papua New Guinea but they go everywhere. Summerland Christian School are doing a trip to Uganda so they are asking the kids to pack a couple of these kits in their bags and they’ll take them to places where they’ve retrieved women that have been kidnapped for slave trafficking. They are going all over the world. If people are travelling they can pack some of these bags and take them to womens shelters, refuges or orphanages.
A lot of the women and girls don’t have access to any sanitary products. Some of the girls in Africa have to sit on a box for five days, they miss school so over a year they might miss 10 weeks of school. Many don’t even have underwear so they can’t even use leaves or traditional kinds of things. When they are home they are seen as being accessible, they get raped, they get stolen, they will sell themselves to get sanitary items because they want to be able to do the right thing. Some of the girls in the African countries resort to doing unspeakable acts in order to get some sanitary products. The main thing is to keep the girls at school so they realise there is a better life out there, keep them educated and safe.
Each pack contains 2 pairs of underpants, a washer, a travel soap, a shield, 2 ziplock plastic bags which can be used to wash their liners and the little plastic bag becomes their washing machine. The sunlight kills any bacteria when they put them out to dry.
These bags are supposed to last someone 3 years. After they’ve finished having their children they can send them off to be sterilised and they can be reused for other new mums or girls who have heavy flows. They don’t tend to have heavy flows because they are so malnourished. There are also a lot of women who get obstetric fistulas through birthing as well which is so awful so these packs are used to help there as well. The new mums are known to pull apart their mattresses and use the stuffing because they have nothing else.
If anyone wants to help, donations can be material, small pieces are fine, washers, new underpants, time, travel soaps, or money donations as postage is expensive. Fabrics are all cotton and we can’t use any fabric with animal print, war themes such as camouflage, skulls, guns etc. No pictures of babies, teddys or cutesy things. Nothing that can be sexualised. Checks, spots, patterns or plain are great. The undies need to be full brief, no bikini or hi cut and from size 10 for the girls up to size 14 for the mums.
I mean it’s an inconvenient time for us in our civilised country but can you imagine how much they must dread it.”