Research carried out by Ciara Mitchell - our Gender-Equality Project Curator:
•In 2018 UNICEF conducted a study exploring Menstrual Hygiene management practices in Guinea Bissau.
•Found that 81% of girls have never had any teaching about puberty or about menstruation in the classroom.
•More than 83% of girls did not know the biological significance of menstruation and mostly have no knowledge about menstruation until their first one occurs.
•73% of girls wear old rags as a form of protection during their period.
•Also, girls tend to feel a huge amount of embarrassment when they have their period.
•Reference/ Bibliography: ("UNICEF breaks ground in the promotion of sustainable menstrual hygiene products in Guinea-Bissau", 2021).
Project Proposal by Ciara:
Our Mission
In order to empower women, we wanted to start off with making sure they can attend school and are not held back by menstruation. Helping them afford the costs and ensuring they stay in school from a young age, can have the largest impact over the course of their life.
Sweatcoin
Sweatcoin is a new generation currency that brings values to your steps, giving you the power to make a difference through your movement. They reward their app users with sweatcoins which the user can then donate to charitable initiatives around the world. Sweatcoin ran a campaign in February where 6,620 of their users donated their sweatcoins to fund their project!
Project
From the Sweatcoin campaign, we managed to buy 24 pairs of menstruation underwear from the M&S Menstruation Underwear range! These are made from Cotton and can be re-used multiple times. After a lot of research, this was the best option for price and quality, as we want to ensure these last for years to come and are the best sustainable option!
Thank you to Lara Raven from Sweatcoin for setting this up and working with us and thank you to Ciara Mitchell for volunteering for AGB and creating this project!