Pachamama in numbers:
Volunteers: 2,500
Current distribution partners: 8
Countries where we have distributed: 11
(GREECE, LATVIA, TURKEY, PAKISTAN, UGANDA, SOUTH SUDAN, UKRAINE, THE UK, THE US, LEBANON, TANZANIA)
Pacha Pads distributed: 120,800
People supported out of period poverty for up to five years: 16,121
Our mission:
The Pachamama Project has four key missions:
Relieve global period poverty
Break down the menstrual stigma
Promote sustainable periods
Build community
A message from our Founder, Ella Lambert
This is our first newsletter since the horrendous race riots which struck our country this summer. To anyone in our community who has felt afraid to leave the house because of the colour of their skin or the place that they worship I am so deeply sorry. Although just a minority of people were involved with these acts of hate and violence, I cannot imagine the effect they have had, and continue to have on your lives and communities. We are committed to being part of the movement to build a Britain that celebrates diversity, embraces difference and prides itself on providing safe haven to those fleeing danger.
Thank you to everyone who joined us in writing welcoming letters to asylum seekers around the UK, a community which has been shaken by the events.
Let us continue to drown out the messages of hate with messages of love.
If anyone has been personally affected and would like to reach out, there is always an ear for you at Pachamama.
Highlights:
•We have now distributed 120,800 of your Pacha Pads in your beautiful bags.
•Pass It On Trust, one of our partners in Uganda, is now reporting zero school absenteeism by our school girl beneficiaries due to their periods.
•New partner in Uganda: we are running a trial with a school in Kabale where period poverty has been evidenced as a direct cause of school absenteeism amongst menstruating girls and the feedback is outstanding.
•New group for Chelmsford-based asylum-seekers set up to meet once a week to make pads with local volunteers: a social activity which includes learning new skills, English language practice and local integration.
•Period poverty committee of like-minded NGOs set up in Lebanon to pool resources and promote best practice. Set up and chaired by Pachamama CEO.
•Volunteer testimonials - thanks for all the lovely testimonials we received. Hearing how invested you all are and how much Pachamama means to so many means such a lot to us. These are really useful when it comes to our applications for grants and also for recruiting new Pachamamas.
Partner update:
Pakistan – 14,000 pads have been sent to the charity, Abaseen, supporting 2,800 schoolgirls in rural Pakistan out of period poverty for the next five years. Ella has been asked to visit the project and talks are under way to organise a trip some time in 2025. The Abaseen team would like Ella to conduct a workshop on making the pads with a view to helping them set up a microbusiness for some local women, and to give talks at Peshawar university.
Lebanon – Following Ella’s successful trip that we reported on in our last newsletter, The Pachamama Project is now working with two new partners (Jigsaw Charity and Circle of Wellbeing) as well as continuing to partner with The Free Shop Lebanon. These new partnerships are allowing us to reach new groups in different territories including in Saida (predominantly Palestinian community), Arsal (close to the Syrian border) and the Bekaa Valley (Saadnayel and Bar Elias).
In collaboration with Circle of Wellbeing and Jigsaw we are running monthly mother and daughter menstrual health workshops where teens learn about the menstrual cycle before going to another room to do some colouring. Their mothers stay behind to learn how to best talk about menstruation with their daughters and are given information about menopause before they all receive our reusable pads and are given a tutorial on how to wash them. The sessions are delivered by our menstrual health coordinator Mariam and are designed to foster healthy conversations in the sessions and at home to destigmatise menstruation and create a ripple effect in the community.
Mariam has also developed resources for us to share with other partners around the world and has delivered her first training session outside of Lebanon to those responsible for distributions at Kigezi High School in Uganda with amazing feedback.
We are currently packing to send another 30,000 pads in a container this October for a further 3,750 people. We are also collecting donations and packing good quality donated children’s clothing from The Meadows Shopping Centre, in Chelmsford, where we have been given free use of space again. We’ll be waving off another 40ft container in October to The Free Shop in the Bekaa Valley.
Funding-allowing, we are hoping to set up a Pacha Club with Circle of Wellbeing in the Bekaa Valley so that women in the community can make pads for themselves and others whilst enjoying a creative activity in a safe space.
Thanks to another year’s funding from The Dalia and Ramzi Charitable Trust, we will be able to achieve many of our goals in Lebanon in 2024.
Uganda – The power of the press – We were contacted by a teacher in a rural school community (Kigezi High School) in western Uganda following the BBC story on Ella’s trip to Lebanon. He realised that many of his female students were missing school every month. He asked a female colleague to speak to them and established that the reason was period poverty. He bought some reusable pads with his own money – which solved the problem. But, as he said to us, he has a school teacher’s salary and cannot afford to provide pads to all the girls in the school – and now colleagues in neighbouring schools have also asked him for pads! We have sent a trial for 46 girls to make sure our pads work in this setting. Mariam delivered the menstrual health and hygiene education (including on how to use and care for the pads) online, which was extremely well-received. We aim to supply pads to 2,400 girls in this school to irradicate period poverty among the student population and, in the future, to help other members of their families. The initial feedback is outstanding. Here are the highlights:
South Sudan – We have finally found a way to get a trial of pads to South Sudan. Following Ella’s BBC coverage, we were contacted by someone who works for an NGO in Juba who has taken a suitcase of pads to an organisation called Shining Hope for Humanity which supports women and girls, particularly those in the refugee community. If the trial is successful, we will apply for funding to ship about 5,000.
USA – Our partner Food Justice DMV boasted the first ever drive-by distribution of reusable sanitary pads!! They joined forces with Oakton High School to get the US-made Pacha Pads to 30 students and their families. Students were able to drive up and pick up food parcels and pads from a Spanish-speaking volunteer who explained how to use them and care for them and delivered our leaflet in their mother tongue. To date, 5893 pads have been made and distributed in the US and we are hugely grateful to all our US Pachamamas and our Pachamama ambassador, Joy, who makes it all possible. Ella and Heidi will be visiting Washington DC in October and are excited to meet the team at Food Justice DMV and get some in person feedback from those who have received the pads.
Chelmsford asylum-seeker group, UK – In collaboration with The Art Place, Trustees, Ruth and Helen and local volunteer, Jo, have been running a sewing group for Chelmsford-based asylum-seekers on Tuesday afternoons to make and prep pads – as a pilot. We are applying for funding to support the group activity. This is a valuable opportunity for the women to socialise, meet locals, practice their English, develop new skills and build their self-esteem – as well as to add to Pachamama stocks to support our wider beneficiaries. We have so far provided 100 kits for all the current Chelmsford-based asylum-seekers in need of sanitary pads.
Fundraising Highlights
If you are on social media, you will have seen the fabulous videos of our trustee, Helen, jumping out of a plane to raise money for us – and to celebrate her 70th birthday! She raised over £1,700 pounds. We went to support her on the day and we’ve never seen someone so chilled – it was like she was off to the shops!! Helen has made more than 23,000 pads for us. She is a machine!
If you have links with any club that fundraises, any WI, Rotary Club, university society, school, please alert them to the Pachamama cause! Postage, shipping and materials have gone up considerably and, of course, as we grow, so do our costs.
Easyfundraising
This is a really easy way to raise a bit of money for us. Whenever you shop online, access your online shop via the easyfundraising site and we get a percentage of your spend. It’s pennies – but they all add up and don’t cost you a thing. And there's everything on there - even your tesco grocery shopping.
Volunteers:
We currently have 2,500 volunteers signed up. We aim to distribute 64,000 pads this year, which is half of our distribution total over 4 years. We always need to keep recruiting more volunteers so if anyone has a friend of family member who would like to get involved, please get them to get in touch. We also have a new “one-pager” on Pachamama which everyone is encouraged to share far and wide.
Schools:
New Hall School in Chelmsford has set up a Pacha Club. All year 8 students will be involved as part of their volunteering. One of our key objectives is to roll out Pacha Clubs UK-wide and we are currently working to develop a programme. If you have any links to schools who may be interested, please share our information with them. Ella is also available for talks.
Speaking opportunities:
Ella recently spoke on the panel of a prestigious Global Citizen event on the intersection between girls' health and education in Parliament in London – an event hosted by Helen Grant MP, Former Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Girls' Education and co-founder of Global Citizen Michael Sheldrick. The keynote speaker was the Rt Hon Patricia Scotland KC, Secretary-General of the Commonwealth and Ella was on a panel moderated by the former Prime Minister of Norway, Erna Solberg. The other panellists were Thoko Elphick-Pooley, Exec Director, Uniting to Combat NTDs and Adrian Dongus, from the Sanitary & Hygiene Fund. This shows that we are starting to have an important impact in terms of raising the profile of period poverty as a barrier to education and gender equality.
Among others, Ella also spoke at Bristol Women's Voice International Women's day event in March, Plan International UK’s Inspiring Youth Action Plan panel in London in July and Public Interest Registry X Community Boost's event: “Champion Your Cause: Maximizing Impact Through Events” in August.
Corporate volunteering with Wallace & Gromit!
Exciting news! Makers of Wallace & Gromit, Aardman Animations in Bristol is running a weekly in-house Pacha Club for some of its employees! Ella gave a talk and ran a workshop in July and got a tour of the studios! A lot of the fabric being used comes from the sets!
If you work for a company that allows for volunteering days, we want to hear from you!
This is a great way, not only to make some more pads, but to engage with a new group of people and spread the word more widely about what we do.
Award
We are delighted to announce that Ella has been nominated for the 2024 .ORG Impact award. The .ORG Impact Awards is a global awards program to recognise and celebrate individuals and organisations that have a connection to a registered .ORG domain for their contributions, achievements and impact they have made in their communities. She will be off to Washington DC in October for the ceremony and will take the opportunity to meet with Food Justice DMV, our US partner and to catch up with Melissa who runs Pads4Refugees and with whom we collaborate regularly. As a finalist, Ella’s work will be promoted far and wide via the award socials.
Housekeeping
Please remember to add a note to your parcels with your name and the numbers of pads and bags and labelling any PUL/waterproof pads. This really helps us at HQ.
Pad checklist: Please always check your pads are 26cm finished length minimum and hold the 20ml – they may need an extra layer of towel in the core.
Website
You may have noticed that the content on our website is out of date. We are looking for some pro bono help and are working on a complete overhaul to represent where we are as an organisation now. If you know someone who can help please send them our way.
Friends
Please check the “friends” page on our website: https://www.thepachamamaproject.org/friends.html
If you are not listed and have asked to be – or maybe you didn’t tick the box on the volunteer form but have changed your mind – please let us know so we can add you or your group.
OUR THANK YOUS
Lynn, our Bristol Ambassador who has been supporting local volunteers with fabric and storing and getting pads to HQ for the past few years has stepped aside. We are extremely grateful for all the hours she has spent, all the logistical running around and for giving up so much garage space to Pachamama for so long! We and the Bristol Pachamamas will really miss her.
Liz, our website designer, who will be handing over to a new designer but who, generously, is continuing to cover the costs of hosting and domain name. She has been incredible.
The Dalia and Ramzi Charitable Trust for their ongoing funding support to enable our work in Lebanon.
Big Yellow Storage – for free storage in Chelmsford, Essex – and for returning a little sanity and space to HQ.
Sue and her team at the Meadows Shopping Centre for TWO units making it possible for us to sort and ship from for the Lebanon container project.
Shema for regular donations from her Belly dancing classes.
Sewing Bee Fabrics for discounted PUL when we need it.
County Linen for boxes and towels.
All our amazing volunteers and their families who get involved with pads, bags and snapping.
“Never Underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world”
Margaret Mead, US Anthropologist 1901-1978
The Pachamama Project
Ending period poverty, one reusable sanitary pads at a time. @thepachaproject
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