PENSACOLA — Girls in developing countries suffer infection and exploitation during times of their menstrual flow.
Without sanitary supplies contained in feminine hygiene kits, females miss days of school, and have diminished ability to work. Without pads, they must use rags, mattress stuffing, banana leaves, feathers and cow dung to manage menstruation.
Days for Girls International, a grassroots non-profit organization, aims to change that. Now, so do groups of Santa Rosa women from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"Julia Gibson, from Gulf Breeze, Florida, introduced this program during a church women's group meeting,” Pensacola Ward Relief Society President Billie Nicholson said. “She explained how women in developing countries have unhealthy feminine hygiene … Then she told of the international project, Days for Girls, created to organize volunteers to sew feminine hygiene kits.
“…The night of our event, we had thirty women from four different Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Wards show up,” Nicholson said. “Women and young girls cut patterns and fabric. They serged, ironed and sewed items to create components of the feminine hygiene kits.”
Days for Girls designs reusable pads, shields and drawstring bags, which volunteers can sew. These items make up kits containing underwear, soap and plastic bags. Kits also include health and hygiene information.
West Florida groups scheduled a second sewing event. “That allowed us time to complete 34 shields and many reusable pads,” Nicholson said. “Some women took drawstring bag sets home to continue working on their own.”
It didn't stop there. Desire to work on this project has spread to five more church wards in the Stake (or LDS regional organization). The Navarre Ward met Thursday; the Milton Ward meets Aug. 25.
Some of the kits are already on their way to a Days for Girls Uganda chapter in Orem, Utah, where workers will inspect each item for quality construction. Santa Rosa groups will send more completed kits in November.
This article originally appeared on Santa Rosa Press Gazette: Santa Rosa church groups sew feminine hygiene kits