Lunapads Blog

I am brimming with joy on the recent updates on several Goods4Girls projects afoot in the world.  The next installment comes from Anna and her project called “Cycle of Hope“.  While planning her trip to Kenya to do some volunteer work with HIV/Aids positive women, Anna heard about Lunapads and Goods4Girls and wanted to make this a part of her project.  Resourceful and determined, Anna contacted Lunapads, Goods4Girls, joined a local women’s group in Conneticut, and raised enough money to send 40 Goods4Girls Kits to Kenya.  Shipping products to Africa is not always easy, as we’ve learned from our experience sending Lunapads to Zimbabwe.  Not expecting a confrontation from Kenyan customs officials at the airport to pick up the Lunapads, Anna found the courage to stand up against them.  Here is her report in an email I received in mid November:

I fought Kenyan customs, and I won. At one point yesterday they were demanding over $300 from me in additional taxes and fees. I stood firm: these are donations for a charity. You can’t tax me. This is so not like me! I continue to discover power in myself I never knew I had… and this morning I brought my box of Lunapads home from the airport without paying a penny. Woo hoo!

You can read more about Anna’s trip on her blog here.  It is a wonderful story to follow.  Anna set off to Kenya to help empower other women and in the process, has come back to the United States a more empowered woman herself.  Home briefly for Christmas, Anna is heading back to Kenya in January to start an NGO to help establish sustainable incomes for the “positive” women of Kitengela.   On her follow up trip, she’ll distribute the Lunapads Goods4Girls kits to a small Kenyan-run NGO working with underprivileged teen girls in Kibera.  We look forward to your update in the new year Anna!

Our Goods 4 Girls campaign continues to inspire scores of women to help girls in Africa. The latest inspiration is Anna Hawfield who, upon reading about Loretta’s trip to Kenya (which is a very moving blog post) contacted Lunapads to see how she could help while volunteering for International Volunteer HQ. Anna will be distributing Lunapads Goods 4 Girls Kits through the help of Africa Youth Trust, a local NGO that has overseen similar projects in the past. Anna will be in Nairobi for 6 weeks starting in November. To stay on top of her trip, check out her blog here at Cycle of Hope.

Just before leaving for her trip, Anna joined a women’s networking group called SECT (Southeastern Connecticut Women’s Network) and attended a local meeting of the Mastermind Group. “The core purpose of the Mastermind group is to work co-creatively with women locally and globally to facilitate them with empowerment projects in their own lives and communities. Mastermind recognizes women as an underutilized resource in the world. When these women are supported to realize their potential the quality of life world wide improves.”

In just a few weeks, Anna and generous members of SECT raised over $1,500 to fund the purchase of over 50 Lunapads Goods 4 Girls Kits. Way to go ladies! We’re looking forward to getting an update from Anna when she arrives in Nairobi and updates the blog with her story and pictures.

We are so happy to see how the act of global community service is spreading among the Lunapads community and beyond. Please contact us if you want to participate or share your story.

We are excited to give an update on one of two campaigns going on to provide Lunapads to girls in Uganda. Natalie Angell, co-founder and director of the Shanti-Uganda Foundation (based right here in Vancouver, BC) approached us earlier this summer telling us about her work and her trip to Uganda. While we have become well aware of the plight girls in Africa face when menstruating and missing school, we were particularly moved to learn about the challenges women face during birth and were only happy to help Natalie in this area as well.She wrote to us yesterday with this message:To the women at Lunapads, I just wanted to email and thank you for your support in sending us to Uganda with a supply of pads for the girls we support there. I have just updated our blog with some photos of the girls with their new pads and some of the experiences they face each month.

We’re so excited to connect with you and include a lunapad in the new birth kits that Nikiah is putting together to be sold! This is a fabulous project and one that the women and midwives will benefit from! In addition to the birth kits, Shanti Uganda improves the physical, emotional and spiritual health of communities impacted by war, poverty and HIV/AIDS in Uganda . Through the use of yoga, expressive arts therapy and traditional healing, we teach children ways to heal from the inside out. Our programs restore traditional birthing practices in rural communities through education and birth assistance and relieve poverty by supporting income generating initiatives for women with HIV and AIDS. Thanks again for your support and the incredible work that you do for women around the world!

Be well,
Natalie AngellIn part 2, we’ll provide an update about the work Carrie-Jane Williams is doing in Uganda and her delivery of over 50 Lunapads “U-Go-Girl” kits. You can follow her blog here.

If you haven’t read about the issue (or seen the recent Always commercials) there is an immense problem with girls in developing countries who miss school due to being unable to cope with their menses in a clean and comfortable manner, often resorting to using twigs, tree bark, grass and rags. Always’ answer to this is the Protecting Futures campaign. As discussed in the previous entry, disposables are not a real or sustainable solution to this problem.

Goods 4 Girls is the brainchild of Deanna Duke (known online as eco-blogger Crunchy Chicken), who has taken matters into her own hands by connecting washable pad manufacturers, like us, and their customers, with groups working directly with girls in African nations. Read her original blog post about the disposables donations issue here.

The issue of school girls in Africa has been on our radar for some time. Over the past 5 years, we have been contacted by many amazing women about girls in all parts of the world who need our help. Because we’ve never been able to come up with a practical and reliable solution to connect our efforts with our customers, we have simply been donating pads as requested. To date, we have sent pads to Zimbabwe (on numerous occasions), Kenya, Swaziland, Uganda, Mali, Ecuador and Mexico. We also have a good friend working in several local communities in Africa teaching them how to sew their own Lunapads. So, we know first hand how real this problem is.

Thanks to Deanna, we are supporting Goods 4 Girls in two ways: by sending an initial shipment of Lunapads, nylon purses and Lunapanties to girls Africa and by creating our new Goods 4 Girls Lunapads Kit and Goods 4 Girls Lunapanties Kit so that customers can purchase them for donation.

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This is one of two entries about the issue of girls in Africa missing school due to not having menstrual products, including the current Always and Tampax campaign to “donate” disposable pads to girls in Africa. Below is a guest post from Christina Vogel, a customer in Des Moines IA, who eloquently articulates what many of us at Lunapads, as well as our colleagues and customers, have expressed about the campaign. The second entry is about a new organization, Goods 4 Girls, that is working to address this issue in a sustainable way, as well as a new Lunapads Good 4 Girls Kit that customers can donate.

“I also wanted to tell you about a conversation I had over an Always commercial. They showed a young girl in Africa that could not go to school because of her period. They stated that their company sends their products so that girls like her don’t miss out on an education. As I watched this commercial I realized that giving them disposable pads and tampons in an area that does not have sanitation set up is not truly helping their situation. Nor does it truly help empower women by holding them down to a company that they will have to use for the majority of their life. I started to think about your products and how truly helpful they are. They are made with a woman’s needs in mind and are not a continuous buying process. Last but not least they do not require the a sanitation process after use. You can simply wash and reuse. I am currently looking into setting up funding to buy your products and send them to women across the world that need these products to go to school, work, or complete their daily lives, without harming their environment. I once again would like to thank you for your products not only for the ease that they have brought to my life, but the ease that I hope they bring to women all across the world!”

There has been a lot of discussion lately on the web about girls in Africa in the wake of Tampax and Always TV ads on the topic. While we have yet to complete our assessment of the relative good actually being done by disposable products being made available to girls in need, for our part we regularly donate Lunapads to organizations working with women and girls globally: the latest recipients happen to be in Swaziland.

In January of this year Cindy Myint, a customer in Atlanta GA, wrote to us: “I am writing on behalf of a charitable group that my mother runs for the benefit of a small village called Nkamazi in Swaziland, Africa. To give you the quick background, my mother is the Executive Director of a small AIDS non-profit in Moncton, NB. She was approached a few years ago to partner with an African group and ultimately to improve the lives of some 80 children orphaned by parents who have perished from AIDS and its complications.

This is a grassroots movement with little funding. However, they’ve made a big impact in the little time they’ve been working there. Most notably, they have 39 children enrolled in school with their fees being paid largely by individuals and groups in the Moncton and Saint John areas. They have also established a sustainable garden with land donated by the village chief and created a sewing group. They’ve raised funds for several sewing machines and received many donation from Canadians of fabric and notions which are hand carried to Swaziland by dedicated volunteers.

Over the holidays, my mother was telling me that the girls in Africa miss on average one week of school because of their menstrual cycle. They actually stay home from class and use rags for roughly a week. In an 8 month school year, this equates to 2 missed months of school for the girls. My mother had never heard of any natural/reusable alternatives until I told her about your products. I was turned on to Lunapads by an acquaintance of mine here in Atlanta who swears by them. When my cycle returned after my first pregnancy, I was pretty bummed about having to stock up on pads and tampons after being nearly 2 years free of the annoyance. That’s when my friend told me about your products and I had my husband hunt them down the last time he was in Vancouver.”

Lunapads responded immediately with a donation of 4 dozen pad and liner sets. The photo above is Cindy’s mom, Debby showing the girls how to use their new Lunapads.

Cindy writes: “I am happy to report that the Lunapads were extremely well received by the girls in Swaziland. Attached is a picture of two girls getting their pads, along with some instruction of how to use and care for them. Once word got out to the girls that they could get these pads, they started coming to where Debby and Julie were staying to get them.”