I find that in today’s society the topic of period poverty and menstrual hygiene is often overlooked and not spoken about enough because there’s the misconstrued idea that everyone is expected to have automatic knowledge on the discourse. However, you would be surprised that in this present day and age, millions of women across the country barely have access to proper menstrual products or facilities to aid their cycle. I mean, in big 2024 that’s kind of a shocking discovery.
This discovery prompted the COLGAR team to lead an outreach on period poverty and menstrual care. On the 22nd of March 2024, we set out to government day secondary school in Ilorin, Kwara state and we were met with enthusiastic young girls eager to hear what we had to disseminate towards the cause. In as much as every young girl present learnt a variety of new things, I, in the same vein learnt a lot. It was quite startling to learn that majority of the young girls didn’t know what actions to take when they faced menstrual cramps. We educated them on what meals to abstain from and the foods to eat that could promote their overall menstrual health. They also learnt how to properly count the days in their cycle so as to enable them to prepare for their period day as most of them lacked access to a smartphone or the internet where they could reach apps like Flo that help to keep track of menstrual cycle days.
One would expect that every lady should be able to afford a pad but this isn’t the case as most of these girls come from underprivileged families. Sanitary pads and tampons are a luxury for them, rather than the necessity they truly are. About 40% of them reported that they use tissues when bleeding due to the high cost of tampons.
In a bid to alleviate this challenge faced amongst the girls at government day secondary school, COLGAR distributed sanitary towels to each girl present as well as educate them on the proper usage of pad in order to maintain a proper hygiene. The girls were really excited to receive free pads as it would ease the financial burden of how to get pads for their next cycle.
It was a really fun experience informing the girls about their body and learning on their different challenges as well as their lack of knowledge on critical things about their cycle. Sharing the pads was quite a seamless process as the girls were cooperative and receptive. As a team, the major challenge we faced was….
The highlight of the outreach for me was the inexplicable joy so evident on the faces of these young girls as they received their pads which made it a huge success in my opinion and this couldn’t have been achieved without the help of the volunteers, myself included who arrived at the venue on time and also ensured to assist with educating the young girls and sharing the sanitary towels as well as other refreshments.
At COLGAR we do not relent in our efforts to alleviate period poverty and we’re constantly making plans to ensure our next “Fight period poverty outreach” surpasses the previous one. We believe with this small acts of kindness and enlightenment we can reduce the amount of young ladies suffering from period impoverishment.
This article is also a prompt to everyone who comes across it to indulge in conversations about period poverty and also try to the best of their ability to give out free pads to those who are in dire need. You could also spread information about the cause through social media.
If you would like to be a volunteer at COLGAR or donate to support, kindly visit www.colgar.org . Together we can FIGHTthe pandemic called PERIOD POVERTY.
