Girls in Africa lose days from their lives when they have no access to hygienic menstruation aids.
They lose days from their education, from work and are often being isolated from others. In fact, a girl can lose 3,000 days over her lifetime and in poorer countries that is very much the reality.
Girls and women in developing countries, often use whatever they can get their hands on for sanitary hygiene, such as old cloths, leaves or rags. Days For Girls is dedicated to providing access to washable, recyclable quality hygiene kits to help girls reclaim the days that they lose each month.
So, What exactly is Days for Girls?
Days For Girls is a world wide NGO that came out of the USA and is now in over 140 countries. It enables local women to make according to a set pattern, Recyclable Sanitary kits.
These are already enabling thousands of young women to no longer suffer humiliating embarrassment and who were missing out on important educational opportunities, to sometimes get infections and even suffer death.
All because of a lack of access to monthly hygienic aids.Days for Girls also enables many many women to earn through alternative income source that is guaranteed to be self sustainable.
Marketing Recyclable Sanitary Pads serves the dual purpose of providing a necessary health product and an economic resource.
In addition, working together on this project is an important form of occupational therapy in our case here in The Gambia because it also builds relationships between women and can be fun!
Our Ghana visit and Days For Girls
We, Samaritana Gambia, visited Ghana’s Days for Girls Operations Office in September 2016. We spent time with the local couple who make and distribute a 100 kits each month.
We also attended a Days For Girls session where there were over 200 young girls.
Now, here in tiny Gambia, a small team of women have been making 100 kits a month, working about 50 hrs/month each and getting 100% of the profit.
As part of their agreed conditions for getting an allowance (before the profit at the end of the month) the women are involved in our Literacy Class.
Sponsorship, Funding and Donations
Because of the poverty in the community, very few locals can afford Kits which cost Dalasi D300 each (about 5 pound, or 6 usd or 5.5 euros).
So we would love if you, the reader, would feel free to help sponsor some kits for this project so we can supply kits to the poorer communities of girls and women.
To your left, the foot pedal Singer model, requires no electricity. This machine is very important in countries where “electricity” is somewhat unreliable, or not available at all.
In New Zealand, a simple message (about sponsoring kits) on a workplace noticeboard spread like wildfire and NZD$900 was raised within a very short while for these Kits!
And if that doesn’t grab your fancy, why not apply to volunteer with us for a few months? Seriously!
What’s inside the Kits?
All the Samaritana Gambian women wear and love them. A Scottish journalist (who “crashed” with us at His Place) when she was chasing stories in January 2017 about throwing out the Military Dictator who was refusing to leave the country, bought a kit from us and was very pleased with it.
What do these Kits consist of?
One nice “kit” bag holds everything which includes:
- 1. One wash cloth;
- 2. One pair of new panties.
- 3. One awesome smelling soap;
- 4. One plastic wash bag to carry the used pads;
- 5. Four recyclable washable comfortable pads;
- 6. One absorbent shield which holds the pads; and
- 7. A “How to care and use Kit” form along with a “cycle” calendar on opposite side.