Lunapads Blog

If you were anything like me in 7th grade, you probably owned about 12 different flavours of cheapo Lipsmacker brand lip balm. For me it was an obsession. There were dozens to collect; all candy coloured, overly glossy, scented and flavoured to high-heaven. They didn’t really do much for chapped lips and they melted all over the place if they got too warm. I remember leaving my favourite Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker on the dash of my moms car on a hot day and when I went to use it, I just about poured it all over myself, totally bogus! Never mind that they contain ingredients of questionable safety like Mineral Oil and petroleum based waxes.

I grew out of the Lipsmacker obsession pretty quickly, but my search for the perfect lip balm continued. If I lined them all up, I would probably find that I still own about 12 different tubes of the stuff at any given time, but there are only 1 or 2 that I ever really want to use. A privileged few that get transferred from back-pocket to bag to jacket until I’ve scraped the last out of the bottom of the tube.

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Suzanne and I are just back from an epic journey to Uganda. Among many high points while there was a visit to AFRIpads, a washable padmaking venture started in 2009 by Sophia Klumpp and Paul Grindvals, then recently graduated university students eager to make a difference in the developing world. The story of how this all came to pass has a magical quality to it, in the way that truth can so often be stranger than fiction.

Try this for a story: Carrie-Jane Williams, a young Canadian woman, traveled to Uganda in 2008 as part of a group of students from the University of British Columbia researching education for girls in the area. Being a Lunapads customer and aware of the lack of sanitary products for girls, she fundraised and purchased some Pads4Girls Kits to bring with her. On her last day of her trip, she met Paul and Sophia and showed them the products.

Intrigued and inspired, they contacted us to see whether we were OK with them essentially copying the Lunapads design and business idea. We said yes, little imagining that 4 years later we would be meeting them in person, touring their factory and exploring ways to support one another’s business growth.

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Over a decade ago when I worked with gem stones and made jewellery, I partnered up with a soap-maker and we hit the local craft shows together. I recently met up with my friend Rene who has continued making soap to this day, her business is called Karma Suds. Not only is Rene a fantastic soap maker she also created the Soap Making School to share her knowledge of herbs, essential oils and how to concoct the most amazing organic natural products ever.

Rene also combines her talent at making soap with her training as a Reiki practitioner. I have a specialty with gem stones back in our craft show days we created intention soap together. This is more than just soap, inside each specially handcrafted bar of Intention Soap you will find your own personal Intention Stone. Each time you use your soap, you will move closer to meeting your stone. The stone has been cleansed and empowered by a Reiki Master to enhance and focus the energies that are naturally part of your Intention Stone. Each herb and essential oil that has been added to the soap has a specific purpose. Once you meet your stone, it will be charged with your own energies and you can carry it with you.

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We have teamed up with Hot Mama Gowns to offer you a double-giveaway! Enter below for your chance to win your very own Hot Mama Gown and/or 1 of 3 Lunapads Sampler Packs. Log in with your Facebook account, or enter using your name and email address. Contest ends first thing Friday, December 30th at 12:01am EST.

Hi everyone, Lisa here! I had the pleasure to work with Deidrea Haysel of Hot Mama Gowns recently, and thought some of you might be interested to learn more about this firecracker entrepreneur and her innovative organic cotton maternity gowns. What better way to spread the love than to host a joint giveaway!

Here’s some information about Deidrea and why she started Hot Mama Gowns, plus 2 (count ‘em, 2!) giveaways that you can enter below. Read on or Visit our Facebook Page for more info!

Hey!  My name is Deidrea and I am the self-proclaimed “Hot Mama” behind Hot Mama Gowns.

The idea for Hot Mama Gowns was born at the same time our daughter was born in May of 2006. After having an awesome pregnancy and a pretty swift, uncomplicated delivery; I had the clarity to really evaluate my surroundings. Namely the itchy, chemical smelling, faded hospital gown I was wearing.

The standard hospital gown was far from stylish, comfortable, or functional. The gown got in the way of skin to skin contact and breastfeeding, two things that were very important to me. I couldn’t wait to change into something that was comfy and allowed me to bond with my baby girl. Pajamas weren’t really an option right after delivery, so I started to brainstorm about the ideal maternity gown that would make me feel good (and look good).

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Please post below your favourite finds for socially responsible, handmade, local or upcycled gifts! We have a giveaway of a gift certificate to Cangles for one lucky person to select their very own bracelet!

Ah Christmas! A love/hate relationship for me. There are quaint pieces of it that I adore but a flip side of greed, stress and commercialization I do not enjoy one bit.

This year I have been looking for alternative gifts that give back in bigger ways or unique upcycled/recycled products. I also have a soft spot for artisans and crafters as I do have an artsy side myself. It has been so much fun researching ideas and there are a ton of really neat ones. Here are some of my favourites:

Cangles are a super neat recycled aluminum-can bangle. They sent us a couple to try, and we love them! Based in Michigan they make unique, green, quality-made jewelry and gifts. Their fashionably green jewelry design and construction is based on the 3 Rs: Reusing, Renewing & Recycling! Cangles is kindly sponsoring our giveaway with a gift certificate for one lucky reader so you can pick your very own Cangle!

Blend Creations has really neat stainless steel jewelry, including bracelets, necklaces, earrings, rings, and more! My personal favourites are the customizable Twitter @ symbol and QR code charms. As it turns out one of the owners is a BIG Lunapads fan and has been using our products for years! As many people tell me, Canada does come up with some pretty innovative products. (Lisa likes their ultra-functional honeycomb wrench necklace shown on the left.)

Socially conscious and charitable gifts are my favourite. One year, for my Dad (who is super hard to buy for). we sponsored a whale. He loved it! Here are a few other suggestions of unique and socially responsible gifts from me, and the Lunapads team:

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As regular readers will be aware, over the past decade Lunapads has been developing the Pads4Girls program to bring reusable feminine hygiene supply kits to thousands of girls and women in need in over 15 countries. Pads4Girls seeks to address an often-overlooked problem that hundreds of millions of girls and women in developing nations face: missing school or work for several days every month because they lack adequate menstrual hygiene supplies. You can learn more about the issue and its impact on our site here, and in the Pads4Girls section of our blog.

Trying to determine how to make a bigger impact with Pads4Girls from a distance only goes so far, and we feel called to learn more and go deeper. In January 2012 Suzanne and I will be traveling to Uganda with Shanti Uganda, a Vancouver-based charity that improves infant and maternal health, provides safe women-centered care and supports the well-being of birthing mothers and women living with HIV/AIDS in Uganda.

We are appealing to the Lunapads community to raise funds to enroll 300 teenage girls in Shanti Uganda’s At Risk Girls Program, a health and wellness program focused on inspiring futures for girls and teen mothers in Kasana Town Uganda. As part of the workshop, each girl will receive AFRIpads (Ugandan-made cloth pads based on Lunapads, see below for more information about them) and a health education manual.

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We’ve had a business crush on the fabulous team of RockinGreen soap company since they first hit our radar at the ABC Kids Show a few years ago. Here’s a picture of Madeleine and I with the RockinGreen team after a lovely breakfast with them in March 2011 at  Natural Products Expo West.  Since then the RockinGreen team has made even greater business strides, most recently acknowledged as “Fastest Growing Company of the Year” and its CEO, Kim Webb, as “Best Entrepreneur” at the 8th Annual Stevie Awards for Women in Business.

RockinGreen’s highly successful soap formula has clearly been a hit with cloth diapering enthusiasts all over the world. So, when we learned last spring that Kim was working on a formula for cloth pads, we couldn’t wait to try it out. Unveiled a few weeks ago, Femme Rock is now available at Lunapads for those who like to “Rock the Cloth”. To learn more about this fabulous product, I asked Kim a few questions.

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Gogo Bags is offering a starter kit including a sandwich, snack and a cutlery bag (value of $23) to one lucky reader! To enter: visit Gogobags.ca and tell us which Gogo Bag fabric is your fave in the comments! We’ll chose a winner on Friday November 25th.

Sierra Club estimates that North American families spend as much as $85 a year on disposable lunch baggies and millions of them are thrown out every day! That’s a lot of trash and a lot of money wasted on something that can easily be replaced with a reusable alternative.  Gogo Bags are one of our favorite reusable bag makers. They’ve kindly agreed to sponsor a giveaway for us (more info at the bottom of this post!) but first here’s the story behind this awesome Canadian Women-owned business:

GoGo Bags was created as a result of my daily struggles with packing lunch and snacks for my kids. I was looking for a durable, reusable bag made of 100% cotton inside and out and couldn’t find one. All the available options have either nylon lining or Velcro closing, which may not be food safe depending on the manufacturing of the fabric.

I teamed up with my mom (GoGo Bags’ master designer and expert in sewing) and together we created bags purely made of 100% cotton and nothing else.

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This is a copy of the guest blog post I wrote for the Social Venture Network blog:

Social Venture Network conference organizers have always been mindful of ensuring emerging issues from it’s members get a voice during the conference. After meeting Jackie Vanderbrug of Criterion Ventures at the Social Venture Institute at Hollyhock (a Canadian based offshoot of SVN) and briefly learning about Criterion’s work towards “Bringing a Gender Lens to Investing” I felt the SVN community would benefit from a deeper conversation on the topic.

So, I helped organize a Call to Action Roundtable with Joy Anderson of Criterion Ventures titled: “Investing in Women: how to increase women’s access to capital and invest in social entrepreneurs focused on improving the condition of women”. Much to our delight, over two dozen participants gathered over lunch to join in the lively conversation. With several other Roundtable conversations going on concurrently in the same room, we often had to raise our voices out of necessity (and perhaps passion!)

My own interest in the topic stems from my passion for advancing issues which affect women and entrepreneurship. It was over a decade ago when Lunapads learned that a progressive investment fund, Renewal Partners, was looking to invest in socially responsible businesses that were led by women and focused on women’s issues. I wanted to share with the SVN group my positive experience obtaining capital and dealing with our investors (Joel Solomon and Carol Newell, both long time members of SVN) and working with Vancity Capital for debt financing.

After Joy introduced her framework for the conversation, the group engaged in an enthusiastic conversation that centered around three common themes:

Make it easier for women to access capital: While all of the women entrepreneurs who attended the session had successfully attracted capital to finance their business, their experience and degree of ease in obtaining that capital varied.  It was positive to learn that the social capital market is growing rapidly, but very few funds are targeted to women, and fewer still target women within community development. “Providing women equal access to capital is both a question of equity and an untapped/under invested opportunity” emphasized Joy. Others expressed frustration with the archaic legal regulations that hamper the ability for the average person or groups of people to make small investments in women run businesses.

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To say that I was star-struck meeting Bitch Magazine founding Editor Andi Zeisler for the first time is a bit of an understatement. Although it continues to baffle me as to why, I realize that feminist media and cultural criticism is not everyone’s cup of tea. It’s definitely one of mine, though, and Andi is one of its most incisive proponents and voices. We were in Portland earlier this summer for the most excellent World Domination Summit and took the opportunity to stop by the magazine’s offices.

Lunapads has recently entered into a more wide-ranging and intentional relationship as “Ambassadors” with Bitch Media, Bitch magazine’s nonprofit parent organization, and as such are seeking to broaden support for their work within our community. With that in mind, please consider subscribing, advertising, donating, volunteering and/or just plain old spreading the good word!

Andi and I took a look at a couple of different areas where women’s health, consumer products and questionable media messages intersect: namely, some current ad campaigns for feminine hygiene products and hormonal birth control.

To hear Andi deconstruct the subtle-yet-insidious phoniness that underlies that UbyKotex campaign was particularly heartening to me, as it seems to have been well-received by many progressive women, who welcomed its message while leaving its products unquestioned. (Also see Suzanne’s post about how UbyKotex claims to have invented the notion of groovy-looking menstrual pads, an idea that Lunapads has been championing for almost 2 decades!)

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