It's about time I gave you an update on my trip to Lebanon - and what an unforgettable trip it was!
Back in mid September I headed to Lebanon for a month with Alice (co-founder of The Free Shop Lebanon) and Melissa (from Pads4Refugees who provide disposable pads) to spend some time with the teams on the ground, meet potential new partners and oversee our distributions.
After working with Melissa, and The Free Shop local team (Khaled, Dalaal, Tahani, Ibrahim, Mohammad and Bashar) for the last three years it was wonderful to finally meet them and hear how the pads are going down!
The team are great and so enthusiastic about the pads having completely overcome the
taboo. Now both male and female members of the team discuss the project openly and are equally as excited to get more pads to people that need them and meet the communities' menstrual needs.
Dalaal, Ella, Tahani, Melissa, Alice
The pads are extremely popular in the shop and it was amazing to see all the clothing donations and blankets supplied by our volunteers now sitting proudly in the shop.
Whilst I was there, the Free Shop team organised a focus group for Melissa and I to ask questions. Four women who use our Pacha Pads gave us some valuable feedback:
Focus group
This was a very small group, so we are working on seeking further feedback, but, nonetheless, it was an extremely useful exercise.
•They love the material (especially as the pads don’t stain) and they are able to wash and dry the pads easily.
•They would like the pads to be longer (We are looking into how to manage this – whether we change all our pads or send a percentage longer and the rest the same – as there are a lot of young women and teenagers using the pads). Please don’t make any changes to the pattern for now.
•Women are unable to speak openly about their periods and the feedback was that unless men are also educated on Menstrual Health Management (MHM), this won’t change.
•Menstrual myths persist in the community - e.g. that women shouldn’t shower on their periods. This means that sometimes women aren’t showering for up to ten days. This is problematic especially given the living conditions within the camps.
This is something we can help address during our distributions.
The settlements
I accompanied the Free Shop team to the settlements to register more families for the shop. I saw children wearing shoes that are five sizes too big. Many people had been living here for years and have no prospect of leaving. There are often up to 14 people sharing a two-bedroom dwelling, with one bathroom.
The households have water tanks and are able to hand wash their pads with hot water and detergent/soap as well as access private space to dry their pads.
People living here rent their tent/living space from the UNHCR who in turn rent from local farmers. As the economic situation worsens in Lebanon post the Beirut port explosion, apathy towards the Syrian refugee crisis has risen. More and more farmers are demanding their land back and refugees in the Bekaa are increasingly getting evicted, forcing movement to other, overcrowded camps.
Lebanon school programme
Before I left for Lebanon, a student from the International College in Beirut contacted Pachamama, asking for support and advice for a group they wanted to set up to help refugees make reusable pads.
This was great timing! I spent a few days in Beirut and visited the school. I gave a presentation to the sixth form and then ran a workshop with the group of young women who had been in touch. After my talk, I took lots of mature and thoughtful questions over 40 minutes, including from male students, who were outraged that period poverty is such a big problem in their country and they had never heard about it.
Two of the male students requested to start a club to make Pacha Pads to be distributed in the Bekaa Valley via our partners. The group who attended the workshop will set up a club to make pads and teach the younger students how to make them.
I ran a two-hour workshop teaching the students how to make the pads. The students were extremely enthusiastic and organised themselves to create a production line with the support of a textiles’ teacher.
I also put the student group in touch with Wing Woman Lebanon to find a target community to teach how to make pads so that the refugees can seek to sell pads to earn a living.
The collaboration with International College is a pilot programme involving a talk, workshop, club and collaboration with other NGOs. We hope to replicate the programme in other Lebanese schools and elsewhere. The programme is in line with our objective to destigmatise periods around the world, educate young people on period poverty and sustainable period solutions, increase our production and distribution of reusable sanitary pads and make distribution of pads more locally sustainable.
Committee
Whilst in Lebanon, I set up a committee of NGOs working on period poverty where we share resources and research and work together to identify and fill the gaps so that we can be more productive in tackling period poverty in Lebanon:
The committee will meet at least quarterly, virtually or in person and we will update each other on operations, share resources, map period poverty and create collective solutions for period poverty in Lebanon. The committee project in Lebanon is a flagship programme which we hope to grow and which could be replicated elsewhere in the world.
BBC World Service
I spoke to The BBC about my trip to Lebanon back in July and though it was a bit touch and go for a while they decided to run with the story and send their Beirut-based BBC team to film the trip. Interviews were conducted with me, with some women who have been using our pads, including two Syrian refugee women living in the settlements and a Lebanese woman living in Bar Elias. The BBC also came with me to the school and interviewed the students and filmed my talk and the workshop. Here’s the film that was broadcast on TV and online on 21/11/23. The coverage has already generated new volunteer interest and really helped us raise the profile of period poverty in Lebanon and beyond. More and more we are seeing the press pick up stories about period poverty in conflict zones and refugee crises and it's extremely welcome.
Our new Pachamama coordinator in Lebanon
Please extend a huge Pachamama welcome to Mariam.
Mariam is a Lebanese pharmacy student based in Zahle (near Bar Elias), trained by the UNFPA in menstrual hygiene management education and has previously worked with Wing Woman and the Jigsaw Project, facilitating MHM workshops. She will work with us one day a week on distribution, monitoring partnerships, taking feedback, conducting MHM workshops and raising the profile of the Pacha Pads with the local population in need. Mariam is also coordinating the International College project and is creating MHM education resources that we can then provide to all of our partners around the world. She is fluent in English and her mother tongue is Arabic.
Mariam has already conducted the first hugely successful MHM workshop with the Free Shop team and a new partner, Circle of Wellbeing and will be offering this education to other organisations working on period poverty in the region.
New Partner
We have a new partnership, alongside the Free Shop. Circle of Wellbeing is a women’s centre in Bar Elias. They run skills-based workshops, yoga and mother and baby projects. They have conducted MHM workshops before and have already received Pachamama MHM training on how to deliver the pads.
Health Impact, who we previously supplied with Pacha Pads, has sadly shut down. The stock has been moved to The Free Shop warehouse and some of them will now be given to the Circle of Wellbeing. We're also working on setting up a sewing project in the centre so that women from the community can volunteer to sew pads, which they can keep or be put back into our general stock for others in the region.
Thank yous
Huge thanks to Alice (Free Shop) who organised the trip, found us a great place to stay above a coffee shop - and ferried me around in our rental car, making valuable introductions. Melissa from Pads4Refugees joined us for the first week and it was fabulous to meet her in person after collaborating remotely over the past years.
Thanks to The Free Shop team, Khaled, Ibrahim, Tahani, Dalaal, Mohammed and Bashar, who fill me with admiration for what they do and with huge confidence in terms of what we can do together to support more women and girls in the area.
Thanks to Thea, Khaled, Manar and Shmoua at the Circle of Wellbeing for helping so much with regards to the BBC filming and for all the work you do to support women in the Bekaa.
Thanks to the Dalia and Ramzi Charitable Trust fund that made this trip possible and funded much of what we have done in Lebanon this year.
The work was intense, but I came back hugely motivated and confident that Pachamama is definitely making a positive difference in Lebanon, and that we have the potential to achieve so much more here and elsewhere.
Palestinians
I had to leave Lebanon a few days earlier than planned because of the horrendous Hamas attack in Israel and the terrible destruction of Gaza. We know that period poverty in Gaza right now is a massive problem. However, there is limited water and many of the displaced people do not have a private space to manage our reusable pads safely. We therefore ran a joint fundraiser with Pads4Refugees and raised £1000 to buy and distribute pads. Our route in is no longer viable and so we have paused any fundraising. In the event that aid routes open up we will do our very best to alleviate period poverty in the region.
2024
We aim to send at least another 30,000 pads to Lebanon in 2024.
We have also committed to filling another 40ft container with clothes and shoes (and Pacha Pads) to send to Lebanon late summer/early autumn. We will be sending donations to The Free Shop and to another charity, Fabric Aid, which also runs shops stocked with good quality used items for communities in need in Lebanon.
With Mariam’s help, we aim to increase our distribution of Pacha Pads in both the refugee and the Lebanese populations. We will also be reaching out to more schools and, via our new committee, working on a strategy to make a significant impact on period poverty in Lebanon.
With our work here and with our other partners around the world, 2024 is going to be busier than ever.
A final thought.
Our hearts go out to all those suffering in Gaza right now. We hope for a ceasefire, peace in the region and the safe return of all hostages to their families.
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