Save 500 Female Inmates: boost menstrual hygiene.

At the height of inflation in my community, my team (C4HDI) and I rigorously struggled to keep to our word of supplying female inmates at least a carton of sanitary towels a week for this harsh economic weather. We actually understand that they require and need numerous cartons of hundred itemized sanitary towels per carton per week. In this situation, we planned an impromptu campaign in the community, re-sensitizing our community for the urgent need to donate for this cause. Noticing the urgency to save this situation, Chinyere, a female volunteer with us, whose only source of income is selling vegetables of the least quantities. A business that passes for less than petty. A woman with 3 children, whose life could be described in economic terms as "struggling". She caters for her three underaged children, one out of the three hawks vegetables around the community each day, after school to help augment her mother's income for economic upkeep of their family. She does this under harsh, scorching sunlight, daily. This reference is to buttress the surprise, pity and imagination of all our team members when she donated her widows might for this cause. "My women folk deserve everything to make them comfortable and hygienic during their monthly menstruation ", she answered when asked why she donated out of almost nothing with her. " I will do more, if I could", she continued, "the youth among these women inmates should be added to learning classes to help them grab a job after their terms". On hearing this suggestion, our secretary booked it down for our further consideration and discussions at the forthcoming Board meeting.

This was one of the ways we eked out funds to purchase weekly sanitary items for the ladies and women inmates till date. To rescue this situation, antiseptic liquids we purchased are frugally divided into plastic containers to be able to go them round, weekly.In as much as a few of us go for the weekly visit to deliver items for them, we embark on an entire monthly visits by all and including our volunteers. On this weekly visit, we discovered as one of the female inmates showed us her back, that it was a rash caused by bacteria. We booked her for an added antiseptic soap, as advised by a physician. On our general monthly visit, the rashes were all gone. It'll be noted here again that, special permission are gotten for our male members to be able to enter the female section of each correctional centers. Our males particularly participates on monthly visits. Our standards in C4HDI is that we do on the spot assessment of improvement or otherwise of our causes.
On the on the spot assessment carried out, we found out many gaps that needs to be filled. One special gap is that we should have to have a gynaecologist in our team. We have approached a popular gynaecologist in my community to ask if he could be one of our volunteers. He considered our plight and agreed for stipend "just to be refuelling my car", he finally said. We also noted that we are lagging in our target of providing each female inmates a reasonable monthly portion. We are quite below average on this target.
For this and more to improve our services, we have embarked on online training with the Lightful. We earnestly would want to see improvement and our final consummation of our target. We are encouraged especially by our community stakeholders who show appreciation in prayers and goodwill messages they send to us. Our organization is always mentioned in churches and play grounds, for our commitments and services to the community.
All this makes us feel at home with our services to the female inmates in correctional centers in my community. Confessions from some of the inmates tells that we are like saviours to them as they thank us immensely each time we visit. Two of the female inmates whose time is almost due to be discharged has started planning of joining our organization when they are finally released soon. They promised to volunteer for 10 hours daily for us when there out. It's funny to note that we are their mirrors because they are on restrictions not to use mirrors in their cubicles. So, we usually tell them everything they need to know about their looks of which they take corrections. On each of our next visits, we notice and take note of the improvement on them. It's also funny to note that, only about those females at the verge of being discharged are bothered about their physical looks. It's revealed that they do so because they want to look their best outside the correctional centers. Otherwise, other female inmates rarely bother about their physical looks. We discuss this in a lighter mood each time we are on our way back to the office.