GLOBAL CITIZENSHIP AWARD
Generation Education Period Team
Generation. Education. Period By Brooke Cohen United World College of South East Asia
in Singapore, nobody bought them. We realized we were inadvertently distributing a product that we, ourselves, wouldn’t even use.
Can you imagine if girls at your school missed one week of their education every month? In many communities, period poverty causes just that. Period poverty, the inability to afford safe and sanitary menstrual products, plagues millions of women around the world. Menstruating women who are unable to afford menstrual products face one of two consequences: using unsanitary alternative menstrual products to enable them to attend school/work or skipping school/work to avoid using unsanitary alternatives.
After months of research, we partnered with Freedom Cups, a local Singaporean business enterprise. Freedom Cups sells menstrual cups with a “buy-one-give-one” model: for every menstrual cup bought, one is donated to a woman living in period poverty. As menstrual cups can be reused for up to 15 years, menstrual cups are a sustainable solution for women who lack the disposable income needed to purchase menstrual products. They are also a cost-efficient and an environmentally-friendly solution for women around the world. We have since introduced Freedom Cups at our school shop.
In 2015, I learned about period poverty after hearing a teacher speak about it in class. She spoke to us about the alternatives many women use in Asia and Africa: old rags, ash, mud, and coconut husks. I couldn’t understand why this was the first time I heard about this issue. At school and from many family and friends I had learned about many global issues such as climate change, food insecurity, and discrimination. However, period poverty-- an issue affecting the education and health of women around the world-- was widely being ignored. That’s when some friends and I set up Generation Education Period. We spent our lunchtimes sewing reusable sanitary pads to be distributed to women in Cambodia. However, after six months we had not created a single reusable pad that was worthy of being distributed. After an overseas school trip, we realized our partner organization in Cambodia could make one reusable pad in 15 minutes and provide employment opportunities for local women. Sure, we felt empowered raising money and sending funds to provide women with sanitary products, but after a few years we saw the faults in our solution. Since menstruation is taboo in those communities, drying reusable pads in the open was humiliating for the women using them.This prevented women from ever re-using the product. Moreover, when we tried selling reusable sanitary pads at our school community
After interviewing the founders of Empowering Women of Nepal (EWN), we found that many Nepalese women in their community in Pokhara, Nepal could not afford sanitary products. We spoke with them about menstrual cups, and they are excited to introduce them to their community. At our school, we have sold forty menstrual cups to students, teachers, and parents. Through the buy-one-give-one business model, we have forty cups to distribute to women in Nepal. We are also creating menstrual health and hygiene courses for the Nepalese schoolgirls receiving our menstrual cups. We are excited that EARCOS granted US$500 to purchase an additional fifty menstrual cups. This will help support fifty women in Nepal menstruate safely and continue going to school and work for the next 15 years. This year we are also introducing menstrual cups in our sister campus, UWCSEA Dover. We plan to reach out to UWC campuses around the globe to expand our impact. By doing so, we will encourage international schools to support women living in period poverty and also introduce a more sustainable practice.
Fall 2020 Issue 43
