Women changing lives in Nepal one kit at a time
A GROUP of Toowoomba women is working hard to change the world by helping girls and women in Nepal.
The Days for Girls Toowoomba team spend countless hours sewing washable menstruation kits to distribute in one of the world’s poorest regions.
Team leader Robbie Burton said the kit included a drawstring bag to give the girls privacy, a plastic bag to do washing, underwear, shields for the underwear and reusable liners.
“At the moment the girls will use leaves and bark and whatever they have got, which isn’t clean,” Ms Burton said.
“Most of them don’t feel secure. They end up staying home from school for that time and then they can’t keep up at school.
“If they can’t keep up then they are dropping back, they leave school and then as soon as they leave school they are eligible for marriage.
“So we have 12 and 13-year-olds getting married along with not enough medical support.”
The Toowoomba team started in August 2014 and have since shipped about 7000 kits into Nepal, the latest shipment in April.
“On the recent trip to Nepal, we went up to Gundi and no white woman had been up to Gundi. It was 12 hours drive out of Kathmandu (the country’s
capital),” Ms Burton said.
She said the Days for Girls women travelled to the health care centre where they distributed teaching resource to the health workers - who had also not had any education.
“That morning it was 35 degrees, women with babies on their backs walked three
hours to get to us and they just kept coming,” Ms Burton said.
“We were told we would need 400 kits, we took 600, and the women just kept coming.”
The team also travelled to village schools to educate girls.
It takes $5 to make a kit, $1
each for them to land at Kathmandu airport and customs staff expect to be bribed before the shipment is released. Ms Burton said it was also important that the kits were distributed by someone trustworthy - with males trying to trade the kits outside of high schools for sex.
Despite the challenges, Ms Burton said they believed they were changing the world.
“When you have got women who are prepared to walk that far to get it, how can you not?” she said.
“We believe we are changing the world because we are keeping girls in
education and if you are keeping girls in education, girls will get into politics, girls will get into positions of power and will change the world.”
Anyone who wants to get involved, or donate fabric, can contact Ms Burton on 0407 147 927 or Roslyn Amiss on 0428 338 193.