Water&Pads Archives - International Alliance of Women

Production of reusable sanitary pads!

IAW Communications Unit — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 21:54:28 +0000

A “Water and Pads” Pilot Project at Yaoundé Cameroon

It happened during one of our team meetings with Pascale Vallée and Anne Yotchou in 2023. Anne showed us a plan on how to produce “3000 reusable sanitary pads for underprivileged schoolgirls”. She might be able to produce it all together with a few women volunteers based at Yaoundé. Certainly this was a great idea but there were no finances for adequate installations and the fabric needed.
As it has often been the case with the WP project, unexpected solutions were found concerning the financial problem. Thanks to her connections, Heidi Bodmer was able to organize two well-repaired second-hand electric sewing machines. She could also arrange a free shipping to Cameroon by a logistics company.
This of course reduced the costs remarkably. It was enough for our tight budget to finance the other accessories, as well as the fabric needed for the pads and the sandwiches for the seamstresses.
Anne could install a workplace, and the production started at the beginning of 2024. According to the planning the sewing of 3.000 pieces will take a whole year, as it is all carried out by CEFAP volunteers.

It was clear for us, that BAWUFAG and RENATA; the other two IAW organizations based in Cameroon should also get their share within this pilot-project. In fact WP participants are often asking us for reusable pads which they want to distribute during the WP events.

Starting in 2025 “3.000 pads” has got to be self-supporting unless we get a remarkable higher amount of funding for the WP-project in general in future. We shall therefore evaluate the situation later in the year.

We have already got news from other WP-participants that they are also interested in producing reusable pads on site. This is a wonderful and motivating perspective for the future –
promoting small businesses and thus local value creation.

At the moment, we are simply grateful to the CEFAP team for their engagement. All together with them we are delighted about the many fancies sanitary pads being created.
Have a look at the pictures (please click on the image to enlarge)!

Ursula Nakamura in April 2024

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If men had period pains …

IAW Communications Unit — Mon, 05 Feb 2024 23:10:44 +0000

... or gave birth the issue of stigma and period poverty would be rare if non-existent

These are the opening remarks of Rita Marque Mbatha, Founding Director of WCCF at Zimbabwe writing about the inequality related to menstruation.

She sums it up in a nutshell. Probably no one than her has more insight into the sad reality of schoolgirls in precarious conditions in that country.

“Poverty and inadequate reproductive and sexual health education has untold debilitating consequences on the well-being of the girl child. The unfortunate part is that it affects their attendance in school. Not having access to sanitary pads has negative effects on the girl child. They testify to the use rags and newspapers to stem their periods… and often suffer the shame of staining their uniforms….”

WCCF after a five years’ experience with the implementation of the IAW Water and Pads project WP in around 10 different schools can look back on many positive and even often not expected results.

“This project is the most impactful student service that has been introduced in schools…Period poverty is in decline in schools which we have visited and donated sanitary pads. As a result confidence abounds and school attendance is on the rise…”

The educational booklets about menstruation provided by IAW have many positive impacts on sexual health in general.

“They delve into the issues of sexually transmitted infections and explain in simple terms the danger of leaving an infection untreated. The victim of rape should approach support and counseling after the traumatic experience…”

In her excellent report, Rita comes to some fundamental considerations.

“Human rights are a requisite factor in the dignity of the girl child…

Why are condoms free and sanitary priced out of reach for the girls and women? Why the discrimination? The disparity is fueling the need for the girls feeling compelled to have sexual relations in private or face the humiliation of staining school uniforms after failure to access sanitary pads… For girls to be involved in unprotected sex in order to buy a pack of sanitary pads is a crying shame…Early child marriages result from the unlawful and illegal action of quid pro quo. The desperate girls are infected with a range of diseases which exacerbates the miserable life which they already find themselves embroiled in…”

Rita Marque Mbatha and the WCCF team are fully convinced of the WP project and are determined to continue it!

Read the whole report here.

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Water and Pads, an International Project

IAW Communications Unit — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 22:52:15 +0000

The WP project - a proof of international networking and support

Thanks to a good and trustful cooperation among IAW members worldwide, the WP project has been successful ever since its beginnings. But let us not forget that all this was also made possible thanks to small or large donations and the careful handling of very tight budgets by our IAW-colleagues on site!

That’s why this time we report about some tasks of the WP team in Europe and the sponsorship.

First of all our thanks go once again to Gudrun Haupter, Germany, for her great commitment. Together with Ursula Nakamura, she started the WP project in 2017. This was possible thanks to her excellent contacts with several IAW organisations in Africa over many years. Her great experience in general and her many good ideas were very helpful. Due to age, Gudrun has now given up her mandate as co-coordinator of the WP project. We are wishing her good health.
Heidi Bodmer, Switzerland, who was previously involved in women’s projects in Bosnia, has been active in the WP team for some time and is the new co-coordinator. She likes this stimulating but also demanding job.

All information and enquiries go to the WP Co-Coordinators, where they are also dealt with accordingly.

In addition we are in regular contact with our IAW colleagues in Africa or Asia. This often happens by email, but also via social media. No wonder! Because in remote areas – and often even in larger cities! – the internet connections are very poor. So at least sometimes an message can be sent via WhatsApp. It is also not surprising that our IAW colleagues send us their impressive photos about their WP events by WhatsApp. Later on they can be uploaded, be it on the official IAW website or on our special WP website.

Maybe this is the key for the understanding of the WP project’s success:
When one sees the pictures of all these highly interested pupils attending schools in rural and impoverished areas then one can “watch closely” what is happening to the students during the WP events. When one also reads the reports written by our IAW colleagues, the organizers of these activities, then one gets fully aware of the positive effects on the girls:
Knowing the biological cycle is an important key to empowerment for life!

Publicity is important for the promotion of the WP project in general, and it is essential for the sponsoring. Therefore the support of the IAW members living in rather affluent countries for this promising project is essential. Maybe one is working within an IAW-member organisation, or as an individual IAW member, whatsoever one might find ways to raise some money.

We are presenting here just a few examples:

IAW board member, Dr. Sibylle von Heydebrand from Switzerland, being invited as a speaker on official conferences and talking about United Nations also mentioned the need for a better menstrual health management in the developing countries. She explained the WP project and asked for a donation.
When in April 2023 we had the chance to meet Anne Yotchou from Cameroon on her trip to Europe Sibylle quickly organized an interview with a weekly of the Basel region emphasising on the WP project.

Annemarie Heiniger and some members of the ADF-SVF affiliate in Basel are collecting each year money for women in developing countries during the 1st of May demonstrations. They refer to the women’s strike “Bread and Roses” in USA 1912 by selling red roses in the streets. This year they also disseminated WP flyers. The passer-byes paid a lot of attention to this action and supported it by donations.

Maybe all this is just “a drop on a hot stone” as one says in German, but each donation even a small one is helpful. It is important to mention also the invaluable help of Antonia Lavine, the IAW treasurer, who is always keeping a watchful eye on the WP financials. All IAW membership organizations be it in Cameroon, DR Congo, India, Nepal, Togo, Zambia or Zimbabwe want to be able to continue seriously with their planning for the coming school year. They even want to reach out to new schools and to provide reusable pads to the school-girls. Therefore the WP team asks all interested people for financial support. Why not disseminate the WP flyer among friends and colleagues? It exists in English, French and German. It raises the general awareness about the need for a good menstrual health management and is an important step towards the empowerment of girls and young women! For an Online bank transfer, please go to the IAW donations-website. Thank you so very much! For more detailed information about the WP project please visit the special website Water and Pads for Schoolgirls. Ursula Nakamura and Heidi Bodmer Co-Coordinators IAW Water and pads project in August 2023

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28 May – Menstrual Health Day

IAW Communications Unit — Sun, 28 May 2023 13:42:06 +0000

Education for Menstrual Health -
an important key for the future of schoolgirls!

This has always been an important topic for Gudrun Haupter, long-time IAW Convenor of the Commission of Health. For years, mandated by Deutscher Frauenring, the German Affiliate of IAW, she had worked intensively with IAW member organisations in Africa. As a former IAW representative at WHO Geneva Gudrun Haupter knew about the precarious health condition of women and girls in developing countries.

Thanks to Gudrun Haupter’ s great international experience and many excellent contacts the IAW Water and Pads WP project could start in 2017 with her as its Co-coordinator. Now due to her increasing age-related health-problems, Gudrun Haupter can no longer fulfil this task. We all who are involved with this project express our great thanks to her, and we wish her a lot of joy and all the best.

We are very happy that the Water and Pads project will continue to be coordinated by two Co-Coordinators: Ursula Nakamura-Stoecklin, who has been with the WP-project from the beginning, and Heidi Bodmer also from ADF-SVF, the Swiss Affiliate of IAW, who succeeds Gudrun Haupter as the new Co-Coordinator.

Heidi Bodmer has a great experience in project-management and brings in a lot of motivating ideas. For two years she has already been very active and knows the WP project perfectly well. This means that in future all our work can continue in the best possible way.

Here are a few thoughts from Heidi Bodmer on menstrual health:

The monthly period, menstruation, is astonishing. It turns young girls into women. From a biological point of view, this is an amazing development. Unfortunately, these young women often do not understand what is happening in and on their bodies or why everything is changing. Although the newly awakened woman is in many places celebrated, and the facts are openly being discussed, unfortunately this progressive approach is still rather an exception. Far too often schoolgirls have to hide in shame. They cannot attend their classes due to the lack of hygiene articles. Many schools don’t have toilets at all, or the sanitation is very poor without any water.

Menstruation is often a painful hostage that turns up every month. Most of the time one hates it, but every now and then women are just happy when the so called curse announces itself. Sometimes women simply wait in vain for this bleeding! This can trigger a total feeling of happiness, as a new desired life is announced! But it can as well be a disaster if the pregnancy is unwanted. In this case very often there is no skilled assistance. If then one resorts to an illegal method, the young woman’s health is often endangered even sometimes resulting in death.

That is why our “Water and Pads” project is so important!
Thanks to education, hopefully there will be a little less suffering in this world.

www.iawwaterandpads.com

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World Water Day 2023

IAW Communications Unit — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 10:04:47 +0000

This is one of the sustainable goals of the UN

Dear all,

Every March 22nd is the WORLD WATER DAY.

Promoting health of schoolgirls by teaching them the biological cycle, is very important, but as we know in many places they would also need to have access to clean water and sanitation. Whereas in some schools there are mostly problems with the lack of acceptable toilets, in other regions there is also a lack of drinking water in some regions, so the schoolchildren are thirsty, as Goma Bastola from RUWON Nepal was recently describing it.

Unfortunately due to our very limited WP-resources we cannot change this situation. But maybe you are interested about some news concerning this topic. We have collected some of them for you.

Graduate Women
2023 World Water Day infographic (graduatewomen.org)

Wateraid explains: What has water got to do with genderequality:
Water and Gender (YouTube Video)

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Water & Sanitation – Website & Mandate:
https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-water-and-sanitation

We wish you all the best.

Kind regards
Team WP: Heidi Bodmer, Gudrun Haupter, Pascale Vallée, Ursula Nakamura

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Water and Pads – 1. Report in 2023

IAW Communications Unit — Sat, 11 Mar 2023 15:12:54 +0000

Planning - learning - trying - networking

Even with a lot of planning things very often turn out differently than expected. The IAW colleagues involved in the WP project know this particularly well!

For them, it is always a matter of looking for new ways to achieve their goals when facing completely unexpected obstacles.

So due to a brutal military attack Anuarite Siirewabo from SOFEDEC in DR Congo was unable to hold her planned WP event at the Mapendo School in the city of Goma, last November.

Instead, A. Siirewabo right away got involved in emergency relief for the displaced women and children in the affected neighbourhood. The booklets about menstruation were distributed among the girls living in emergency shelters. These unprotected young women can gain some self-confidence thanks to some basic knowledge about the biological cycle.

A.Siirewabo during emergency relief actions

Joyful play with traumatized children

Now, only three months later, SOFEDEC is again planning their regular WP activities in another school at Goma.

Trying new ways and networking – this is especially true for our WP colleagues in Cameroon.

Since the start of the WP project in 2017 Rebecca Juga, the coordinator of the IAW organisation BAWUFAG situated in the Bali area of Northern Cameroon wanted to participate. But due to the permanent cruel attacks of military gangs the schools got closed in 2018. Consequently, many inhabitants of this dangerous region had to flee, and by now quite a large Bali-community has settled around Yaoundé, the capital of Cameroon. Now at the new place Rebecca Juga and her colleagues of BAWUFAG definitely wanted to start some WP activities,. Rebecca could soon establish good contacts with Akam bilingual academy, a primary and secondary school in a low-income area of Yaoundé.

Rebecca Juga

Meeting the director of Akam bilingual academy

Fortunately Rebecca could also soon get in touch with two IAW organisations based at Yaoundé.
Catherine Aba Fouda, Coordinator of RENATA welcomed Rebecca at her office and gave her a lot of helpful WP information. Also, Anne Yotchou of CEFAP was very happy to have another IAW colleague close by – an excellent networking.

With this new situation at Yaoundé we felt that we could try to get our educational booklets printed on site.

In fact this is an important point for the sponsors of the WP project, because the production on site can promote some local value creation. We already had a successful pilot-project last year. In fact the costs for the printing at Harare in Zimbabwe had been very reasonable thanks to the clever negotiations of Rita Marque Mbata, Coordinator of WCCF.

So our small working group “WP booklet” with Heidi Bodmer, Pascale Vallée, Anne Yotchou and me met in January 2023 by Zoom. It was so lucky having Anne with us, because she right away tackled the issue with much zeal. She coordinated everything with her colleagues: the amount of booklets each one needed, getting a favourable price and finally organizing the distribution. It all worked out perfectly.

Rebecca could collect her share just in time before the start of her WP-activities. In Cameroon the schools like to have special events at this season, because of their national youth-day on 11 February. We are congratulating Rebecca for the huge success she had at “her” school.

«ABCs of being a Girl”, the booklets are ready at the printer’s shop

Anne Yotchou (left) and Catherine Aba Fouda with booklets intended for RENATA

Later on Catherine met Anne and got the booklets intended for RENATA.

This is an excellent incentive for us to promote local printing everywhere else in future!

The WP project is also developing well in other places. Despite of all the difficulties, Goma Bastola, Coordinator of RUWON Nepal has managed to hold her event planned for 2022 right at the beginning of January 2023. The WP project was welcomed with a high interest by the teaching staff at Bal Uddhar Secondary School, a high school at Katmandu. The lecture had been prepared together with the teachers. It was decided to also involve the boys in some ways. This turned out to be very successful, because now there is more mutual respect. At the same time, a sample kit of reusable sanitary pads was distributed to the girls. This is to make it easier for the students to be clean.
Unfortunately, there are many other problems in Nepal. Because of the massive poverty, the parents as well as the school can hardly afford clean drinking water, so the school children are often thirsty.

Bal Uddhar Secondary School at Katmandu, Nepal

Teacher showing a pad.

Should the boys also be present at the WP events?
Completely independent of the success in Zimbabwe and now Nepal, Thérèse Akakpo, Coordinator of LA COLOMBE, has also had positive experiences at the Complexe scolaire Le Guide at Vogan. A health expert was participating at the WP event. Questions about sexually transmitted diseases were also discussed here. Everyone realised how important it is to act responsibly –
and here, too, the schoolgirls have gained a lot of self-confidence!

WP Activities at Complexe scolaire Le Guide, Vauban, Togo

09.03.2023 Ursula Nakamura, Co-Coordinator IAW Water and pads project

Editor's note:
This beautiful report can also be downloaded here so that it can be shown on occasion. The occasion would be, for example, when requesting a donation for the project. The donor can immediately see how wisely and usefully the money is invested.

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The International Women’s Day made in Cameroon 2023

IAW Communications Unit — Tue, 07 Mar 2023 19:29:33 +0000

Women's History Month

Cameroon joins the international community in marking a pause in order to celebrate women on the occasion of the day dedicated to them, March 8. The theme of this year’s celebration is around digital (see also CSW67, editor’s note). How women can use the opportunities given by digital to rise more, to empower one another and to raise awareness to change their story.

Our organization has been initiating several activities as part of this celebration since last week till the D-Day 8 March. Among these activities we have:

our annual WIN Women Leadership and Entrepreneurship conference on women’s leadership and entrepreneurship
Exchanges during debates on the media, conferences, reflection workshops on the women’s rights and girls in Cameroon, on how to implement new, stronger advocacy in favor of the advancement of women’s rights, justice, gender equality and sustainable development in communities with women as the main actors.
A capacity building workshop on digital with women and young women in leadership and entrepreneurship.

Alongside this, we also have charitable activities for disadvantaged women and vulnerable children through donations of food, hygiene and medicines kits.. We also have sports activities, trades training.

The big articulation of this celebration remains definitely the BIG PARADE of the D-Day, on March 8 with around 60,000 women and young girls, who will be in uniform, a common outfit that all women wear in Cameroon for each edition of March 8. They will walk with signs, messages of advocacy, denunciation of violence against women, and especially recognition and dissemination of victories, successes and achievements of women.

Women deserve to be celebrated every day and not only on March 8 because they are strong backbones in the development of our communities.

Long live to all women, long live to all the girls, in Cameroon, in Africa and throughout the world.

Anne Pélagie Yotchou Tzudjom
IAW Board Member
Water and Pads Project Member

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Urgent Call for Donations to SOFEDEC in DR Congo

IAW Communications Unit — Tue, 29 Nov 2022 01:04:44 +0000

Disaster relief for displaced young mothers and babies - Our Associate SOFEDEC provides help

Anuarite Siirewabo Muyuwa, Coordinator of the SOFEDEC organisation in the South-East of DR Congo sends an urgent appeal for help.
She had planned a regular activity of the “Water and Pads” project at Nyiragongo. School in the city of Goma on 5 November 2022.

But as A. Siirewabo describes it, one day before this a huge horrific event had occurred.

“The clashes between the M23 and the FARDC soldiers are extremely brutal and terrible.

The population of Rutshuru territory had to flee on 4^th November, and now they have found refuge in schools and churches in the Nyiragongo territory.

So no school! It is all very difficult. But we don’t give up! We go and provide aid to children in terms of food, ensure protection, raise awareness against gender-based violence, and against sexual exploitation.

For the displaced children we organize emergency activities, and we try to prevent malnutrition.

At the moment I am in desperate need of donations for the feeding of these kids.

Now at the end of November the situation still has not improved. I am giving help in one out of 62 sites, and our team cannot succeed everywhere

I call on you for a fundraising campaign among the women of IAW. I urgently need to find food. We don’t even have porridge for the small children and nursing mothers.

Thank you for your donation.”

Please help our Associate Member SOFEDEC in DR Congo and donate.

Go to “I’d like to donate to a specific project” in the right column and select “DR Congo project” (indicated by an arrow on the picture ).

Help SOFEDEC fill the cups with nourishing soup.

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Information Material about Water and Pads Project

IAW Communications Unit — Sat, 24 Sep 2022 16:49:01 +0000

Water and Pads Flyer is finalized!

We announced an update for the WP flyers.

Here it is!

You can find all relevant information in brief form.

For more details about all successful WP activities please go to the Water and Pads website

Click on the image or here to download the Wataer and Padys flyer as a pdf file.

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