Captain Poprocks Helps Days for Girls

Recently my mother and sister came across the charity Days for Girls, an international organisation who provides women around the world with washable sanitary pad kits.  

From their website:

"What if not having sanitary supplies meant DAYS without school, DAYS without income, DAYS without leaving the house? Girls use leaves, mattress stuffing, newspaper, corn husks, rocks, anything they can find...but still miss up to 2 months of school every year. It turns out this issue is a surprising but instrumental key to social change for women all over the world. The poverty cycle can be broken when girls stay in school."

I can't even imagine not having access to safe, reliable sanitary supplies, for something that happens every month! 

Over the last few months, we have been working on sewing the components of the kits - shields (which look like normal panty liners with wings, and have a waterproof layer in them), liners (flannelette squares to be folded and inserted into the shields for absorption), and drawstring bags for the whole kit to go into. We have also been buying and collecting underpants, face washers and hotel soaps for the kits. Here is a pinboard showing what goes into each kit. 

Yesterday we had a working bee with 20 wonderful volunteers to make a mountain of liners for the sanitary kits. We finished over 600 liners start to finish, as well as completing 100 liners that were already partway through the pipeline, and have another 500 started. 

Of course, Captain Poprocks came to lend a hand, and had a very interesting afternoon... 

...hiding under piles of flannelette... 

...learning how to use the overlocker and the sewing machine...

...and crowing over the stacks of finished liners! 

It was an incredibly successful working bee, and we are so very grateful to the wonderful volunteers who came with donations of underpants and time :) 

If you are interested in finding out more about Days for Girls or making a donation of money or materials, visit their website or send me a message! 

There will be a special Global Sew-a-thon on 11 October 2014 to celebrate the International Day of the Girl.  We are still working out what we might be able to do to celebrate this occasion and help this wonderful charity even more!