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Project 79: From Whispers to Wisdom - Ecuador
Help girls and women in Ecuador break free from period poverty by supporting menstrual health education and access to safe, reusable products. Through our partnership with Days for Girls, we're providing washable pad kits and vital education that replaces generations of myth and shame with knowledge and dignity.Read more
Project 79: From Whispers to Wisdom - Ecuador
Millions of women and girls around the world experience period poverty, a lack of access to the supplies they need to manage their periods. The reasons behind this inequity are numerous — cultural norms, taboos, misinformation, lack of knowledge, cost — but it plays out the same way. When a girl first gets her period, she will normally stop going to school during the week of her period, and this cycle of stopping her life to make room for menstruation continues into adulthood. As an adult, she may miss a full week's wages, or even be segregated outside of the home until her cycle is complete.
This is the Mite Giving Community’s fifth time providing menstrual health education and supplies, working in Malawi, Nepal, Kenya, Cambodia, and now, Ecuador. This cycle of period poverty and its negative effects are nothing new to us, but we find a new purpose and new urgency in every country, so let’s look at Ecuador.
In this country, the annual cost of menstrual pads is estimated at $43.40, nearly 10% of the annual income for a woman in a lower-income household. That's a major factor, but so is culture. In many Indigenous, rural communities, which make up most of Ecuador's lower-income population, periods are too taboo to even talk about. In that silence, over generations, a natural part of a woman’s body has been turned into myths as crazy as the belief that boiling milk during your period will cause it to curdle, or that carrying a baby while menstruating will make them sick.
For Project 79: From Whispers to Wisdom, our giving community is partnering again with Days for Girls to produce and distribute 1,000 reusable menstrual kits, made locally, to women and girls in Loja Province, Ecuador. But just as importantly, you’re also making educational sessions for people of all ages and genders on menstrual health possible.
A kit solves the financial side of this. The conversations solve the other side, the shame that's kept periods a secret for generations. Thank you for making sure something so natural doesn't strip these women and girls of their education, their livelihoods, or their dignity.
100% Funded
$38,000 of $38,000
People served
1050 served
Project category
Health & Hygiene
Location
Loja Province, Ecuador
Millions of women and girls around the world experience period poverty, a lack of access to the supplies they need to manage their periods. The reasons behind this inequity are numerous — cultural norms, taboos, misinformation, lack of knowledge, cost — but it plays out the same way. When a girl first gets her period, she will normally stop going to school during the week of her period, and this cycle of stopping her life to make room for menstruation continues into adulthood. As an adult, she may miss a full week's wages, or even be segregated outside of the home until her cycle is complete.
This is the Mite Giving Community’s fifth time providing menstrual health education and supplies, working in Malawi, Nepal, Kenya, Cambodia, and now, Ecuador. This cycle of period poverty and its negative effects are nothing new to us, but we find a new purpose and new urgency in every country, so let’s look at Ecuador.
In this country, the annual cost of menstrual pads is estimated at $43.40, nearly 10% of the annual income for a woman in a lower-income household. That's a major factor, but so is culture. In many Indigenous, rural communities, which make up most of Ecuador's lower-income population, periods are too taboo to even talk about. In that silence, over generations, a natural part of a woman’s body has been turned into myths as crazy as the belief that boiling milk during your period will cause it to curdle, or that carrying a baby while menstruating will make them sick.
For Project 79: From Whispers to Wisdom, our giving community is partnering again with Days for Girls to produce and distribute 1,000 reusable menstrual kits, made locally, to women and girls in Loja Province, Ecuador. But just as importantly, you’re also making educational sessions for people of all ages and genders on menstrual health possible.
A kit solves the financial side of this. The conversations solve the other side, the shame that's kept periods a secret for generations. Thank you for making sure something so natural doesn't strip these women and girls of their education, their livelihoods, or their dignity.