The SHARE Project
Trip Start
Nov 27, 2008
1
5
6
Trip End
Dec 17, 2008
Blue Mountains,
Australia
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
To give you a little history, SHARE started at the non-formal secondary school in Shikunga, Western Kenya. A group of girls decided to speak up, a highly unusual event in Kenya, and tell the program coordinator of MURUDEF, Mr Onesmus Mmasi, exactly why they were missing so much school. Then a second extraordinary event occurred: Ones called Ryan and I here in Australia and amidst a lot of giggling we finally found out the answer to the question that had been bugging me since I started school - why were the girls dropping out? It turns it was so obviously simple I'd completely missed it
New pads and undies!
. The girls at the secondary school were getting their periods and with nothing to protect themselves with they were forced to stay at home. I'm predicting this to be a rapidly growing concern in African countries. As more and more nations achieve the goal of universal primary education, more schools, both primary and secondary, will find that they need to be providing such products to families too poor to afford them in order to achieve gender equality at school. We just hit the mark early because of our involvement in secondary education. So, in an effort to get the girls back to the classroom SHARE was launched, on our sofa at home, as an immediate solution for the girls at Musango Secondary.
Monday morning rolls around and I tell my girlfriends at work that I've spent the weekend sewing fabric pads. Somehow the idea catches on and a group of us decide that knowing how to make these things could be a great skill in the next Great Depression (in the midst of a global recession who's laughing now) and so we get together around a few sewing machines and cupcakes and make about 60 pads in just one afternoon. Ryan and I are up to our eyeballs in pads at home - sewing and cutting every spare moment - and then the next thing we know we're on radio talking about menstrual cycles and 'flow' to Christo of the Night Show who finds us another 30 odd supporters. My best friend Mags down in Hobart organises her own pad party event, throwing another 50 odd pads into the mix, and we get a generous donation of underwear in the mail from Nicole and the Zonta women's group
Pedal sewing
. Suddenly I find myself standing at the head of a class of girls in a tiny mud hut in remote little Shikunga holding up a pair of undies and a pad, doing a weird demonstration of how the things are supposed to work. The girls are thrilled; all are paying attention. With no boys around they're all happy, open and smiling as we wave our colourful underwear around the room and I can hardly hold back the tears at the thought of just how much such a simple donation can achieve.
From our back-to-basics solution to get these girls back to school, SHARE is growing rapidly as more women here in Australia want to get involved. Aside from the feeling of doing something good that's easily measurable - you can tangibly see exactly where your donation goes - there's something else about SHARE that gets people so passionate. It's the feeling you get when you get a group of women together who know that they're not only doing something great to help out another human being, but, more importantly, we're getting the chance to be women and talk about things we would normally push under the carpet at any other time. I've had groups who are excited about the thought that they've been able to discuss their periods, or the uniqueness of a woman's body, openly for the first time. They've been able to share their thoughts about what it's like to be a woman - the challenges women face - as they make pads that they may never dream of using but can still appreciate. While they're giving self-esteem to groups of girls in Kenya they're never likely to meet, they're walking away with a sense of pride and achievement that they've done something to address the inequalities between genders that are still prevalent in every society.
For me, SHARE is something special. Not only does it have that magic quality of heartfelt charity, but it also says something political: that women, no matter where they live, how they live, or who they are, are equal - to men and to each other. To share is to be human, and SHARE does exactly that - it reminds us of our humanity and humbly gives us a chance to really make a difference.
