Sanitary towels to Poor Girls & Widows in Kenya

Dear friends,

Please receive greetings from Fountain of Hope Youth Initiative in Kenya. We are delighted for this opportunity to bring you up to speed on the progress of our project which without your support could be wanting. 

While doing all we can to meet menstrual hygiene needs of needy sisters in our community, we are appalled by the fact that there is still a lot of stigma surrounding the issue of menstruation not only in our community but globally. Even in rich countries there is still a lot of stigma on menstruation, although they use some jargon like 'Crimson flow', 'on the rag', 'ride the cotton pony', 'shark week', 'women trouble', 'when the moon is red' etc. While some of these words and expressions sound funny for instance 'have the painters in' and 'Congratulations! It’s an egg!', some words are however very demeaning to women and seek to portray menstruation as a negative thing while it is a normal biological process that all healthy women go through, some of the most demeaning words we have come across are words like BV which is an acronym of 'Bloody Vagina', Drainage, Leaking, in the abyss, potential murder suspect and Dracula's tea bag referring to tampons and sanitary pads. (Read more here http://www.mum.org/words.html)

In Kenya we do not have a published list on the words and phrases used for menstruation but in our everyday language this issue has been expressed with derogatory and demeaning language, most of the time it is tantamount to verbal abuse on women. It is saddening that in 21st Century our women not only have to deal with menstrual hygiene needs but also endure the stigma on menstruation. Some religions still consider women unclean while menstruating and therefore not allowed to mingle with 'clean' people freely. Let me pose a question for you; ever thought of why Muslim women do not worship together with men? Or why in some churches there are pews on this side for men and that side for women? This is gender stereotyping that need to be addressed.

At Fountain of Hope we do not just stop at providing for menstrual needs but we have started a new vibrant campaign to end stigma on menstruation. Led by our project leader, James Waruiru, we have started a campaign dabbed 'from Men to Men end stigma on menstruation' we also have motto on this issue, we say and believe that 'No Menstruation, No Life'. This campaign seek to engage men to be more involved in meeting menstrual hygiene needs and end stigma on menstruation. This is not just a local campaign; locally we want to engage more people though participatory sessions where we will provoke open discussions on menstruation and take this campaign wider though social media and blogs. We invite you to follow us on Medium.com where we will be posting more stories on menstruation, Follow us on Twitter and Like our facebook page to stay tuned and also voice your thoughts to this noble cause. We also appeal for more donation as this is an expensive venture but worth every penny. We also invite you to watch this short video to learn more about our work.

Links:

• 5 minute video on our work

Dear Friends,

Please receive love greetings from Kiambu County, Kenya. It is a great pleasure to communicate with you again, We know how demanding life is and so we will be very brief in giving you some updates about our project which will not be impact-full without your generous support, we not only appreciate your financial support but your moral support and approval as well which is the fuel that keeps our small but dedicated team going…so thank you…!

Most of the time when we send you updates we focus more on numbers of beneficiaries and new geographic locations that we venture in but we sometime fail to tell you how much your every cent mean to hundreds of our beneficiaries and us. I recently read an article from a UK online feminist magazine. http://tinyurl.com/omwqouw The head of this article alone is enough to freak the hell out of the reader, ‘’ For Homeless Women, Having a Period Isn't a Hassle – It's a Nightmare’’. This made me pity the poor homeless women of Britain but it also made me think how bad the predicament is for women in sub-Saharan Africa. Maybe you can picture the scenario with me, UK being first world but still faced by this need, in my community it is even worse, many young women cannot access even used rags or cotton wool and so when menstruating they improvise with chicken feathers, re-cycle rags, and in some very remote villages even leaves and paper.

We are sharing this because today we want to centralize our report on our benefactors, we want you to know that your dollar goes a long way to bring dignity to our beneficiaries, keep them is school during their periods and enable them engage in extra-curricular activities and thus why we call this report ‘Dignity, Learning & Play; Coming out of Cocoon’ coz yes that is what we do together with you, bringing these poor women out of cocoons where many shell in themselves during their periods. 

We currently support 833 young women with re-usable, washable towels that are 100% bio-degradable hence very eco-friendly. We have further almost 100 who experience slight side effects with re-usable towels so we give them disposable towels. Through our simple surveys we can report that re-usable towels are not only cool to our environment but are also sustainable because they are cost-effective. We have started a small sewing centre in Kenya with only 2 sewing machines to make re-usable pads but our capacity is minimized by lack of enough sewing machines, materials and stipends to keep our workers running and this is why we reach to you pleading for your support. If you are in USA or Europe and you want to collect material support and ship to us, we welcome that very much, just get in-touch with us and we can try and link you to friends who travel here and they can carry the donations as personal luggage.

We have entered the 2015 Outside of the Box prize, we won second prize from this global competition in 2010, we seek your prayers to scoop the number one slot this year, we will keep you updates in-case we reach the voting stage where we will need you as much to vote for us online. We also welcome ideas, help in fund-raising, publicist and even positive criticism. 

To conclude, when all is said and done, there is only one thing that matters, Holy Bible James 1:27, we seek to practice the good religion before God the Father which taking care of the needy and we and you are partners in this and so we pray God’s blessing on you for supporting this work. Again THANK YOU…!

SIncerely,

FOHLC Team