Before we left to Achham for the Project follow up, we spent a day in a children’s home in Dhulikhel conducting a full puberty curriculum, sexual education, and menstrual health management training.
We had been asked to do an intensive training, with a special focus in empowering the girls in self love for their womens’ condition. It was a really interesting point to begin the training through our associate, the Spanish Menstrual Therapist Beatriz San Roman.
Beatriz was here to train our nurses, trainers and mentors in another way to teach menstrual health. (La casita sanadora)
She had taught the girls how to know our bodies better. She had a model pubis made of cloth, like a cushion, which aroused laughter among all the attendees. This allowed the girls to touch and understand what and where their vulva is, as well as their their clitoris, their fundamental anatomy.
As in the villages, we went through the likes and dislikes about their menstruation, to see how different girls from around Kathmandu are from the girls in West Nepal where our Project is established. Girls here care about their body, whereas in West Nepal, they care about the chhaupadi tradition.
Here girls can be girls. Their, girls are forced to feel impure and stop thinking about normal things for a menstruating person to think about. They begin to think “I can not touch water”, “I can not enter the house”, etc.
We also explained how much plastic is in a normal pad, and conducted a menstrual cup training alongside how to use reusables menstrual pads.
The girls of the childrens home had the great luck of having been sponsored for the training, plus provided with menstrual cups for both them and their caregivers, as well as with reusable menstual pads.
We were really happy to have had the opportunity to teach the girls. Moreover, we are especially grateful to the sponsor of the training for giving the girls, as well as us, this opportunity.
It was a great day. We finished the day off with a play we saw in the menstrupedia trainings, and had decided to use because it was so marvellous.
The girls were given a piece of paper with 3 drops of the same colours, which when you folded, formed different patterns and mixed the colours.
With this, we taught them that we are all similar, but unique.
We have to love this uniqueness!
If you are interested in having a similar workshop, please get in touch with us. Workshops can be done (at this moment!) around Kathmandu by our trainers, and in Catalonia by our associate Beatriz (la casita sanadora).
For more information you can write to us at info@beartsy.org 🙂 Thank you! <3
(Photos at the bottom)
Text & Photos © Clara Garcia Ortés , Fujifilm TX20, Text Correction: Kristy Davis
West Nepal girls need this kind of program. And we need help to continue the project!
Paypal recurring donations:
Or if you feel like it, you can donate via bank transfer at: Banc Sabadell IBAN: ES23 0081 0900 8200 0430 1934 BIC: BSABESBB (your recurring donation will help us have a better planning of our budget to carry out the projects undertaken).
Or take a look to others ways to donate at http://beartsy.org/get-involved-with-rato-baltin/
Thank You! 🙂
