We are delighted to announce our deepened partnership with two amazing organizations (Shanti Uganda, Imagine1Day) who are doing groundbreaking work for girls and birthing women in Africa, and have an exciting update about another organization (Afripads) inspired by Lunapads.
Shanti Uganda
Last month, Madeleine represented Lunapads at the Shanti Uganda art auction fundraising dinner event which raised over $15,000 in support of the construction of a birth clinic, as well as supplies for birthing women. The image below is of Ugandan Midwives with donated Lunapads that will be included in the birth kits.
We are always on the lookout for organizations to donate cloth pads to, though our Pads4Girls campaign. The need for a sustainable solution to womens’ menstrual needs in developing countries is great and there are many wonderful organizations addressing this issue. Our newest recipient group is the Pads for Prisons project. The project exists to address the needs of women in the prisons of war-torn southern Sudan.
After two decades of civil war, the prison system in Southern Sudan has all but been destroyed and is in desperate need of reform. In the mean time the government of has identified a specific need to respond more effectively to the circumstances of children, women and other groups in prison with special needs. An assessment of the situation found that one of the issues that women in the prisons are facing is a total lack of health care and sanitary facilities, including sanitary pads.
Currently prisons are used to house numerous individuals who are not offenders, such as the mentally ill who are detained simply because the specialized facilities required to assist them simply do not exist. Aside from the many mentally ill women, many of the women detained in the prisons are not criminals by North American standards, rather they are in prison because of adultery (considered a criminal offense only for the woman involved) or they are serving time for their husbands who have unpaid debt.
Menstruation is a big challenge for the women in the prisons as they do not have adequate supplies. At best they are forced to use an old rag to deal with their period and at worst; nothing at all. According to Pads for Prisons’ website one prisoner noted that she was tied to a tree during the time of her menstrual cycle, as the guard did not want her to make a mess on the prison floor.
Pads for Prisons has already collected 610 cloth pads to send to the women and are seeking further donations to help supply all of the women at the prisons with a supply of reusable cloth pads. To donate a Pads4Girls Lunapads Kit to the Pads for Prisons project or any of our other recipient groups visit the donate pads section on Lunapads.com.
In Lunapads mythology, Once Upon A Time there was a fair young maiden (yours truly!) who aspired to make the loveliest washable menstrual pads in the land. She toiled endlessly at her sewing machines day after day, week after week, and (natch) month after month, until she created something she was satisfied with. She asked her mirror, “Mirror, mirror, on the wall, which are the fairest pads of all?”, to which the mirror replied “All pads that are made with love and respect for women’s bodies are truly fair and lovely.” Love that mirror! I passed along the task of sewing Lunapads to our noble production partners many years ago, but I continued to sew all manner of clothes and household linens right up until my daughter was born just over 4 years ago.
Since that time, I must confess that gardening has captured my creative heart (easier to do with a 4 year old, as well!), and so I was a bit nervous to pull out my rulers, scissors and 20 year old domestic single-needle machine to make this video – did I still have the magic? That verdict will have to be in the eyes of the beholder of the video, but for my part it was really fun in a “blast from the past” kind of way.
Part 1:
Part 2:
The videos and pattern download were created in response to two needs: first, as a possible option for those who can’t afford Lunapads, or to support those who prefer to make things themselves, just because. Second is to offer it as an instructional tool for women in Africa to make pads for themselves and/or as commercial products, as well as for crafters in this neck of the woods who want to make pads to contribute as donations to Pads4Girls (more on that in the next post – stay tuned!)
A note on the video: it is not about how to make Lunapads, which requires a far more complex sewing process (not to mention 3 different fabrics and 2 different sewing machines – eek!) Rather, it is an easy, adjustable pattern that can be made with a single-needle domestic machine and a wide variety of fabrics. You can download the pattern here. I encourage you to experiment with different fabrics and closures, and have fun!
Lunapads and our generous customers have donated hundreds of pads to women and girls in developing nations in recent years, and we are now offering more ways than ever to help in our new Donate section.
Pads4Girlsseeks to address the problem of girls in developing nations missing school due to a lack of adequate menstrual supplies. Paying homage to Deanna Duke‘s original Goods4Girls project (sadly now defunct), we decided to keep the name simple as well as make it easy for anyone already aware of Goods4Girls to know that we are up to pretty much exactly the same thing. Here’s a quickie fact sheet on the drastic difference that missing school can have on girls’ lives. In comparison to the Always “protecting futures” campaign, Pads4Girls seeks to offer a more sustainable, environmentally responsible solution.
We had the recent pleasure of connecting with Sapna Dayal, Executive Director of Imagine1Day, a Vancouver based NGO (started by the founders of lululemon athletica) whose mission is to provide primary education for children in Ethiopia. Watch our short video interview with Sapna to learn what Imagine1Day is doing, why this work is so personal to to Sapna and how you can fill her suitcase with Pads4Girls when she returns to Ethiopia in May.
We are so encouraged by the growing public interest in helping girls in Africa. This week alone, we added 2 new organizations and are collecting Pads4Girls for communities in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia. You can learn about each organization in the Donate section of our site, and we will continue to update our list of recipients as we connect with them. The synergies of our common mission ~ to help keep girls in school and provide a more sustainable solution is incredibly exciting. But this is just the beginning! We are currently in the midst of bigger plans which include providing resources and training to allow the women in Africa make the pads themselves and create a source of income for their families. We’ll tell you more about this in a future blog post as this project develops.
You can also choose to donate Maxi Pads for inclusion in Birth Kits being distributed by Shanti Uganda, a Vancouver based NGO helping women in rural Uganda . And of course, cash donations can be made to support the purchase of pads.
To watch more videos about our Pads4Girls campaign, go to our YouTube channel here.
We are always on the lookout for organizations to donate cloth pads to, though our 
