SOURCE: FRONT PAGE AFRICA

Women need the support of everyone from the community to government during their Menstrual Period and the need to help them advance hygiene sanitation during such time cannot be overemphasized.

This is why Catholic Relief Services-Liberia (CRS), Catholic Health Council (CHC) and partners have embarked on a hygiene sanitation awareness for women who are in schools and the community during their menstrual period.

 As part of it’s Gender Equity Awareness on Wednesday in West Point, CRS and CHC distributed reusable menstrual pads, in partnership with “Our Children Future, a local governmental organization in Liberia.

The Pad set contains a number of hygienic materials that will keep women hygienic materials that will keep women hygienic until the end of the month.

The project is set for one year period and targets 579 women who CRS is working with in the area.

During the distribution and awareness exercise, CRS-Liberia Country Manager Abena Amedormey noted that the initiative is a part of CRS-Liberia project implementation with support from Later-Day Saints Charity where they have worked with young mothers and women in West Point on nutrition program for approximately a year now.

According to her, as the CRS-Liberia sees the impact of the project on women, it was important to add on other components that support women in menstrual hygiene.

She said support to women in promoting hygiene is not only limited to Liberia, but other developed countries as well.

“You have women struggling to keep themselves hygienic during that moment, so we partner with local organization in Liberia that produces reusable menstrual pads and we are giving over 500 of them to women we are working with,” Madam Amedormey said.

Madam Amedormey noted that it is no doubt that every woman faced challenge ag such period and the lack of resources to procure highly designed products is of difficult, because they are very expensive.
As such, the believes menstrual hygiene should always be a concern for Liberia and Africa as a whole, stressing that working with women of West Point is part of efforts to address such challenge.

Besides, West Point, she said CRS-Liberia also has a high-school project, out of which came the West Point project.

Additionally, Madam Amedormey said the group is at the same time informing men to support women during such period.

“Even in our high schools, during our menstrual hygiene promotion, we do awareness for young men, so that they can know some of the challenges women faced during such period, so they can be supportive to them,” she added.

However, Amedormey intends to take the project to other communities, after West Point.

Besides the distribution, the women were also trained on how to use and reuse the Pad.

For her part, speaking at the awareness, CRS-Liberia Program Manager Jessie Bennett Program Managerunderstandng gratitude over responses of participants at the awareness exercise.

The reusable pad, according to him, will help the women to have another option during their unsafe period and will be used for a long time by them.

He further maintained that the participants were excited to receive the pad and to understand clearly how to use them.

She believed the initiative is intended to promote sanitation practices among women in the area.

“We, at the CRS have some funding that allows us to do other projects, so we took some of the funding to support the menstrual hygiene project,” Madam Bennett started.

Meanwhile, beneficiaries of the awareness exercise lauded CRS for the bold step to educate them on menstrual hygiene.

The beneficiaries who spoke in separate remarks said they intend to take the awareness to their homes and communities as well.