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| Women at Nanga village, rural Uganda |
It’s Christmas Day, you’re sitting around the tree with your nearest and dearest, eagerly eyeing up the promising looking parcels that probably contain everything you need for everlasting happiness. Minutes later your face is hurting from all the fake smiling and every time you exclaim ‘wow I really needed this, this is so great!!’ with as much sincerity as you can muster, a little piece of you dies. Christmas day comes to an end, you’re feeling sluggish from all the food and drink and now you have to find somewhere to put all the junk you’ve accumulated throughout the day from well meaning friends and relatives. Sound familiar? Well this year its time to stop panic buying and wasting resources on rubbish no one wants. Instead use your heart, think smart and ‘Gift Outside The Box!’.
Let’s face it, being a teenage girl is hard work. You get your first period and freak out. It’s painful, you get spots, you start crying for no reason and you suddenly realise you have to put up with this every month FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE. However you were probably lucky enough to have an older female friend or relative by your side talking you through it and ensuring you are stocked up with a range of sanitary protection products, chocolate and hot water bottles. At school your friends and teachers are supportive and discreet and you realise that hey periods aren’t so bad and they definitely aren’t going to get in the way of you doing all those things you dreamed of.
In rural Uganda its a very different story. There is a huge lack of sustainable sanitary protection which forces many women and girls to use old clothing, rags, or newspapers to manage their monthly periods. This causes girls to miss school because they are being subjected to teasing and shaming. When a girl misses too many school days, her academic performance suffers and she is very likely to drop out of school altogether.
This has to stop. Now. Over the last year Raising The Village have implemented a pilot project, partnering with Days for Girls in the village of Nanga providing Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) kits for girls of school age, arming them with the dignity and respect they deserve and making it easier for them to stay in education and build their own futures.
The next time your wondering what to get that teenage girl who has it all, step away from the Bieber merch (I mean think about it, does he really need your money?!) and get her a gift she can really empathise with. You’ll not only be changing lives in Uganda but you’ll be inspiring youth in Canada or wherever you are in the world, encouraging young people to break away from the consumer frenzy and use their heart and their minds instead of just their bank balance.
