Empower Women and Girls through Menstrual Health

On Women's Day 2023 Help BARKA

Eliminate Period Poverty In Burkina Faso

Happy International Day of the Woman!

In Burkina Faso, today is a big deal. Men go to the farmer's market early in the morning and cook for their wives and family, women go out at night with their friends and get a break from arduous schedules, and there are parades and festivities to honor the power of women.

 Here at BARKA, we remain focused on supporting women through the development of an expansion of our successful menstrual cups pilot. We're in the final stages of submitting an application to the US government for funding. There's so much exciting news about this endeavor, here are some highlights:

• Partnerships with Ministry of Education (to work with schools) and Ministry of Health (to work with Community Health Centers)
• Partnership with a strong local social enterprise to help create a sustainable market for cups in Burkina Faso (and to provide a new revenue stream for BARKA!)
• 100% of the local associations we worked with in the pilot are returning for the expansion
• PSI Europe has joined the team and is sharing their expertise from similar projects implemented in other parts of the world
• We've developed a robust media campaign to introduce menstrual cups in a major way through TV, radio, local theatre sensitization, a concert event, and online promotion.

We're super excited about this project and hope you are too.

Please make a generous doantion today to be a part of the wide network of stakeholders that this project has generated.

We need your support now more than ever, please DONATE NOW!

Barka!!!

In September, BARKA completed its final evaluation and impact analysis on the AFRIC'UP: Ya Soma feasibility pilot.

This publication included the initial feedback we shared with GlobalGiving in our August project report, among other details.  English and French versions were distributed to our project partners and local organizations.

Shortly thereafter, BARKA received approval from Burkina’s Ministry of Health to expand the Menstrual Cup project nationally. This “greenlight”reinforces conversations already underway with our 15 partner associations, facilitating agreements and initiating active expansion in 2023.

BARKA has been greatly encouraged by the progress this fall. We are now pursuing opportunities with institutional funders and agencies to assemble financing to scale our efforts in the coming year.  

Support from our GlobalGiving donor community sustains our operational capacity, providing resources to continue our outreach to communities of women about the successful pilot, and set the stage for expansion.

"I think the menstrual cup is a tool that changes the lives of women," shared one participant. We do, too! 

Thank you for your interest in the Menstrual Cup Project.

We are excited to share preliminary results on the impact of our innovative menstrual cup pilot. Our data from comprehensive beneficiary surveys taken at the beginning and end of the project shows that women who use menstrual cups experience a decrease in the number of days that they had to miss work or leave work early. Women also reported fewer negative symptoms, such as urinary tract infections and other signs of poor menstrual hygiene, after switching to cups provided by BARKA.

Even more important, more women now say menstruation is not a problem in their daily lives after using a cup (61.6% compared to 46.7% before they began). More women are able to concentrate at work during menstruation – 96% say they can concentrate always or mostly. And, 74% of women said they don’t feel shame during menstruation (compared to 42.2% before this project). These results are very encouraging.

In addition, we recently completed focus group discussions with the project's beneficiaries, as well as our on-the-ground trainers. We're using the information gleaned in these discussions to understand how to refine and improve our methodology as we develop a country-wide expansion of this revolutionary project.

Thank you for your support, we couldn't do it without you!

Dear Supporters of Girls and Women,

We are in the final stages of implementing our revolutionary cups pilot. All 1200 women have been given cups and trained how to use them- we successfully hit our mark. We are now in the monitoring and evaluation stage. We have already collected surveys from 600 women BEFORE they were comprehensively trained on menstrual hygiene and introduced to the cup. The next step is to wait for all participants to use the cup for 3 menstrual cycles (the length of time it usually takes for women to achieve what we like to call "cup confidence") and see if there was any change in their knowledge, behavior, ability to participate at work or school, etc.

Meanwhile, the pilot was such a resounding success that we're currently developing similar pilots in Ivory Coast, Senegal, Liberia and Ghana. This is a huge undertaking and the first project BARKA will implement outside of Burkina Faso.

Please consider making a donation today to help us in this ambitious endeavor.

Thank you for your support of girls and women in West Africa!

Links:

• Cup Ambassadors' joy is contagious in this :30 video clip