Where girls are too poor to afford panties

My B.C. Hydro bill arrived this week – $1.16. For two months of electricity. At first, I thought it must be a mistake. Then I realized that the B.C. government had given me a $100 credit to compensate for the skyrocketing costs of living this past year.

I don’t understand how a non-political arms-length crown corporation, that supposedly operates independently from the government, pays for the government’s political promises. But I’ll take the $100 anyway. I’m not sure I deserve it, though.

I may complain about the price of gasoline. And house insurance. And imported asparagus. But I’m much better off than many people – both here in Canada and around the world – who can’t afford gasoline, let alone asparagus.

One of my preferred charities provides menstrual kits to girls in Uganda. Each kit contains eight re-usable menstrual pads, and two pairs of panties. Because many of the girls cannot even afford panties.

The charity is ISEE Solutions, founded by a Kelowna teacher,

Erika van Oyen.

She had gone to Uganda in 2008, as a volunteer.

Most of us know Uganda only as the home of former dictator Idi Amin. It’s one of a group of three countries in the centre of Africa, sandwiched between Kenya and Tanzania to the east, the Congo to the west. The other two are Rwanda, infamous for the 1994 genocide of over half a million Tutsi by the majority Hutu, and Burundi.

All three are the product of European countries dividing up Africa for their own benefit.

Van Oyen observed that few girls in Uganda attended school past Grade 6. That is, past puberty. Because they started menstruating.

“A girl having her period is ridiculed,” she explains. “Teased if she soils her clothes. Humiliated. So they stay away from school. They fall behind in their classes, and eventually they drop out.”

And so half the population, approximately 25 million women, are denied the education available to men.

When van Oyen returned to Canada, she felt compelled to do something about this inequity.

She could, probably, have organized a program to ship massive quantities of Canadian sanitary pads and tampons to Africa, and hand them out indiscriminately. But that would have made poor people dependent on products produced by rich people.

She opted for menstrual pads that could be washed, dried, and re-used for several years.

She and her mother organized workshops, one Saturday a month, where 30 or so volunteers made up the re-usable pads and panty liners.

COVID-19 restrictions cancelled those sewing bees, but had an unexpected benefit – moving the production to Africa. The kits – consisting of eight re-usable pads, two shields, two underpants, two Ziplock bags for soiled pads, and a facecloth – are now assembled in Uganda.

Only the waterproof fabric, not available in Uganda – think of Gore-Tex as an example – is now shipped from Canada.

So far, van Oyen’s ISEE Solutions program has supplied kits and information to over 7,500 Ugandan girls. And she can see results. Wherever girls have been exposed to van Oyen’s programs, school absenteeism has declined.

“The girls are using the kits,” van Oyen says. “Some share their kits with other girls who have not been able to attend our training sessions.”

Van Oyen used to lead the training sessions herself. “But why should they listen to me, a white woman, as if I have all the answers?” she asks. So now she has trained local women as teachers.

“Education is a major part of our program,” says van Oyen. (The “ISEE” initials stand for “Sustainability, Education, and Empowerment.”)

“A large part of our work is to prevent pregnancies,” she continues. “So we teach women to know when they are fertile. We promote abstinence first - providing menstrual supplies and sex education is NOT promoting sex.

But if it’s going to happen, we want it to be safe sex, in a healthy relationship.”

I could take my $100 B.C. Hydro refund and buy myself a tank of gasoline.

Or I could send the same money to erika@iseesolutions.org (or through her website iseesolutions.org) and enable a dozen girls to complete their education. To me, there’s no comparison.

ISEE Solutions is not the only possible way of helping people who are far worse off than we are. Other charitable organizations will build water purification plants. Provide goats and chickens.

Plant trees.

Choose your own charity; I don’t care which one.

But please make better use of the rebates governments all over Canada are handing out than spending it on imported vegetables.