Press release: 25 May, 2020
Addressing Period Poverty in Covid-19 lockdown for Menstrual Hygiene Day
May 28 is Menstrual Hygiene Day. “One girl told us ‘how can I go and buy sanitary pads when my family cannot buy flour for food?’”, said Lucy Odiwa, a Just Peoples project leader in Tanzania. Amid COVID-19 lockdowns around the world, crucial programs to distribute sanitary pads to girls and women in developing countries have stopped.
The theme of this year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day is It’s Time for Action. Project leaders in Tanzania and Bangladesh for Just Peoples, an Australian and New Zealand registered charity founded by two Kiwi women, are distributing sanitary pads to women and girls, but are urgently seeking financial support to reach more. Please find below a press release. Please let us know if you would be interested in covering this issue, as both Lucy in Tanzania and Sharmin in Bangladesh are available to speak, along with Jo and Christey who founded Just Peoples.
Kiwi organisation supports women and girls on Menstrual Hygiene Day
Even before COVID-19 lockdowns, some girls and women in Tanzania struggled to manage their periods, resorting to traditional katenge cloth, animal droppings or tree bark instead of sanitary pads.
“One girl told us ‘how can I go and buy sanitary pads when my family cannot buy flour for food?’”, said Just Peoples project leader Lucy Odiwa.
This Menstrual Hygiene Day, May 28 2020, Just Peoples are working hard to distribute products to girls and women, but urgently need donations to further support locals as the pandemic evolves.
“A girl cannot ask her parents to buy sanitary pads, so sacrifices her own health for the greater needs of the family, suffering in silence,” says Lucy.
The theme of this year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day is It’s Time for Action. Lucy said that more activists need to come onboard to find safe ways of helping girls and women handling their periods during the pandemic.
“As we reach out to activists in our area, we have realised that menstrual hygiene management programs that were happening have been locked down,” she says.
“If we can distribute food and have handwashing stations with social distancing measures taken, then we can have centres where girls and women can come to collect the menstrual hygiene products that they require.”
For many families, menstrual hygiene products are not seen as a priority, or women in households don’t have any say in purchasing them. A nationwide lockdown in Bangladesh has been extended until May 30.
“In this lockdown, which has continued for months, families are struggling to buy daily necessities,” said Sharmin Poly, a Just Peoples project leader in Bangladesh.
“There are thousands of girls and women from low-income families, especially from slum and rural areas, who cannot afford sanitary pads.”
Just Peoples are hoping to deliver three months worth of pads to 400 girls and women in Dhaka, the country’s capital and a city of nearly 10 million people. So far they’ve distributed two months’ supply of sanitary pads to 60 girls to get them through the lockdown and school when it resumes, but their mothers still need products.
Just Peoples, a charity founded by Kiwi childhood friends, makes it simple to give directly to grassroots projects tackling poverty around the world. 100% of all money donated to projects goes to a funder’s chosen cause and donations from Australian tax-payers are tax deductible.
For more information and interviews with Just Peoples project leaders or co-founders call Johanna de Burca on +61 474 977 140 (Melbourne) or Christey West on +81 80 2556 5583 (Tokyo). Photos are available on request.