Today is World Menstrual Hygiene Day! Women’s rights and the struggle for gender equality have always been at the core of Amels mission since its inception, so we at Amel want to highlight this important topic for all women and girls and show our continued fight for women empowerment and gender equality. The goal of this day, and one of the main goals of our work in this field, is to end period poverty and period stigma and raise awareness about menstruation and menstrual hygiene in general for all!
First, we must understand some key ideas. Period poverty is the lack of access to sanitary products due to financial constraints. This problem is actually widespread on a global level, but in Lebanon it is particularly dreadful. A 500% price inflation of menstrual sanitary products has left 66% of adolescent girls without access to pads and other products and this is only increasing. A lot of this is due to common period stigma which is a form of discimination against women shown through refusing to educate about and support women through menstruation. This manifests itself in a general lack of education on the matter and lack of government subsidies and assistance in providing women’s hygiene products. We at Amel have tackled this issue at both of these fronts.
Amel has been providing women’s awareness services and distributing sanitary products since the beginning, but in 2017 we were able to set up dedicated SRH (sexual Reproductive Health) and GBV (Gender-Based Violence) programs that have expanded our operations. These programs use peer-to-peer educational practices and additional tools to teach about women’s reproductive health and rights. Our most recent Peer to Peer project pilot trained 20 young girls about these topics, and they were then able to collectively educate 200+ girls inside camps and the most marginalized areas of south Lebanon. Furthermore, we have been able to support 1000 individual women and girls through awareness and counseling sessions to help them through and understand their menstrual cycle. On the resource end, Amel has provided 1000 reusable pads and 140 menstrual cups just this month!
Amel has continued our dedicated work to supporting women’s rights and health by providing education on menstruation and distributing thousands of menstrual hygiene products. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or require further assistance in issues of menstrual health, please contact us!
For more information related to SRH, you can check our monthly podcast (Link will available soon)
Or contact us on our SRH hotline: 71474638
#Menstrualhygieneday
