Young girls learn to make reusable sanitary pads. Courtesy: Ida Horner/Let Them Help Themselves

By Ida Horner
SURREY, England, May 28 2019 (IPS)

The organisers of Menstrual Hygiene Day say that although there has been a lot of good work on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) either currently underway or already completed, we are a long way off from achieving an even playing field for girls and women worldwide.

Menstruation stigma persists in some parts of the world due to cultural practices whilst in others hygiene products are so heavily taxed as to render them inaccessible for some girls.

In some countries, MHM is not treated as a critical component of reproductive health training for adolescents, and as such it does not feature in school lessons and, where it does, teachers do not feel empowered to teach about MHM with comfort. Yet, the ability of teachers to teach about MHM freely can contribute to the breaking down of taboos around menstruation.

There are concerns about fragmentation and its impact on menstrual hygiene education.

In this regard, fragmentation refers to the lack of common goals and joint monitoring that in turn impacts media attention, political will plus more investment in menstrual hygiene education in needed.

Ida Horner is the Chairperson of Let Them Help Themselves.

These are issues that we at Let Them Help Themselves have encountered in the Ntungamo district of SW Uganda where we have been working with schools on menstrual hygiene education since 2016.   We trained a team of local girls who serve as menstrual hygiene ambassadors and as part of their role, they go into schools to provide information about menstrual hygiene as well carry out basic research on knowledge about menstruation.  

Amongst our ambassadors’ findings are some eye-watering statistics, for instance, on average 53 percent of the girls they spoke to did not know what menstruation was before they experienced it and in one of the schools, this figure was 80 percent.

As well as gathering these statistics, the ambassadors are also confronted with questions about menstruation. The questions are, about hygiene, the prevention of infections, frequency of periods, bloating, clots, weight gain etc. A combined education programme on menstrual hygiene in this instance, would ensure accurate information and menstrual hygiene education for boys, men, teachers, health workers, politicians and other professionals. In particular, teachers need to be empowered to provide accurate information and support for pupils and in turn, break down negative social norms

It would also ensure the availability of water and sanitation facilities in schools, privacy and dignity for menstruating as well as policies that reduce the cost of menstrual absorbents.

Why isn’t this happening? Can it all be blamed on the lack of common goals or fragmentation about education on menstrual hygiene management? Whose job is it to educate girls about periods?

You would think that, it is the role of parents, however, our ambassadors report that some parents they speak to do not have the confidence to have these conversations with their children, whilst some do not have an understanding of periods. This was exemplified in a conversation our MHM ambassadors had with a schoolgirl at one of the schools they visited:

“I missed a midterm test because I didn’t have pads. I live with my father and when I asked him for money to buy pads he told me that he had no money to waste on useless things. I stayed away from school because I didn’t want to risk an accidental leak having seen one of the girls in my class be humiliated when an accidental leak left a bloodstain on a chair.”

Given such attitudes amongst some the parents, where should girls go to access information and menstruation products?

Whilst coordination of findings and good practice matters, our work demonstrates that what is needed is the mainstreaming of menstrual hygiene education into development agendas such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Gender Mainstreaming agenda.

It is not enough to have goals that ensure increased school registration for girls who then drop out due to a lack of MHM. In the long run, this has implications for a country’s economic development due to a large number of girls who become adults that are trapped in poverty because they lack skills to create their own employment or access employment elsewhere.

Prior to rolling out the MHM programme to more schools in Ntungamo district we ran a trial in one of the schools. We wanted to find out whether providing free pads would improve school attendance amongst girls. We were surprised to learn that as well as an improvement in attendance; the school had saved money during the trial and the school environment improved. This was because, in the absence of recycling facilities for disposable pads, the school would use petrol to burn the used pads. As a consequence, this would expel noxious fumes within the school grounds.

These findings are anecdotal but paint speak to a need for nation-states to pay attention to MHM in order to achieve Sustainable Development Goals and as well as ensure that gender has been mainstreamed into their development policies.

Our fight to enable girls to access information on menstruation and hygienic absorbents continue and you can be part of it by making a donation to our campaign here.

The author can be contacted via Twitter @idahorner or email info@lethemhelpthemselves.org

Excerpt:

Girls walk across an embankment in the Satkhira district of Bangladesh. Credit: Rafiqul Islam/IPS

By Mahfuzur Rahman
DHAKA, Mar 23 2017 (IPS)

Breaking taboos surrounding menstruation, a project to distribute sanitary napkins to girls in one district of Bangladesh has had a positive impact on school dropout rates – and should be replicated in other parts of the country, experts say.

“In Bangladesh, girls neither get enough support from their families nor their teachers in school during this difficult time, and their problems intensify and multiply as they cannot share anything out of shame,” Dr. Safura Khatun, a consultant at Mithapukur Health Complex in Bangladesh’s northern district of Rangpur, told the IPS on the sidelines of a five-day workshop.“There’s no reason to be sad when you reach puberty with some physical changes. Don’t be sad …it’s time to celebrate.” --Dr Dilara Begum

Inter Press Service (IPS), an international news agency, in collaboration with News Network, a non-profit media support organisation of Bangladesh, organised the workshop titled ‘Empowering Girls and Young Women Through Healthcare and Hygiene Support’ in Mithapukur sub-district on March 12-16, 2017.

Fifty teachers and students from 50 schools, colleges and madrasahs in Mithapukur joined the workshop.

“This is simply indescribable what a traumatic situation girls in Bangladesh society undergo for lack of understanding and care by families and schools. A small support during their monthly period may make a big difference in their everyday life, including education. But sharing of this still prevails as a taboo in our society, affecting the girls’ natural flourishing of their bodies and minds,” said Dr. Safura.

She stressed the importance of incorporating healthcare and hygiene issues in school curricula so that girl students may be aware of the necessary actions at the right time and overcome the shyness in sharing those with parents.

“Girls are definitely reluctant to share their physical issues and problems with their parents …this has to be changed,” she said.

Echoing Dr. Safura, another consultant, Dr. Sabiha Nazneen Poppy of Badarganj Health Complex, also in Mithapukur, said prejudice and family-level restrictions complicate girls’ physical problems, which ultimately hamper their education. “So, we need to give  serious attention to the problems girls face during their menstruation.”

If the girls are left on their own at this stage, Dr Sabiha said, they might complicate their physical problems, causing infections and inviting diseases using unhygienic homemade sanitary pads. “Spreading awareness is essential. So is the support.”

Thus was born the organisation ‘Labonya’, which means ‘beautiful’. Launched in 1998, Labonya has been distributing free sanitary napkins among secondary school students in Mithapukur, an initiative that has proven very effective, thanks to Mithapukur parliament member HN Ashequr Rahman.

“I’ve been noticing since the early 1990s that many girls in Mithapukur skip their classes for nearly a week every month during their menstruation,” Rahman said. “This hampers their academic activities and leads to dropout in many cases.”

“In 1998, I collected data about girl students of the schools in my constituency and found an alarming picture that 90 percent female students have virtually no idea about menstrual hygiene and this is the underlying reason why so many girls drop out,” he told IPS.

The lawmaker said they were not only dropping out but also suffering from various diseases stemming from using dirty clothes and other unhealthy means to manage their menstruation.

Rahman said they started providing sanitary napkins among 25,000 students – from 7th to 12^th grade – in all schools of Mithapukur. “Though we couldn’t provide the sanitary napkins every month for lack of funds, the project continued intermittently until 2001. It was suspended after the change of government following the national election in that year,” he explained.

When the current government took office in 2009, he said, he put the project back in place again, changing the scenario in Mithapukur, a sub-district which has about 500 educational institutions.

According to Rahman, the dropout rate of female students has been substantially reduced in the area with the growing awareness among students about the menstrual hygiene. “They now don’t skip classes during their menstruation. They’re also doing well in examinations.”

He said they will continue the project for another three years to make female students aware of how to manage menstrual hygiene with dignity.

Currently, ‘Labonno’ is providing around 28,500 students with a packet containing five sanitary napkins every month.

Rehana Ashequr Rahman, the head of ‘Labonya’ project, said, “If women remain sick, they cannot properly carry on their studies and they don’t have confidence to stand on their own feet. To help overcome lack of knowledge and awareness and change poor sanitary conditions prompted us to launch the project.

“Today’s girls are tomorrow’s mothers. If we can’t ensure their good health, the future generation will be at stake,” said Rehana, also the Vice-Chair of the Red Crescent Society. “This hands on and practical project should be scaled up all over Bangladesh.”

Mahmuda Nasrin, 40, a teacher of Balua High School in Mithapukur, impressed by the project, said, “It’s a very good project as it makes girls aware about their health and hygiene and explain how to share things overcoming all the prejudices.”

Mishrat Jahan Mim, 16, a tenth grader of Shalaipur High School, Nur-e-Jannat, 18, a twelfth grader of Balar Haat Adarsha Degree College and Irene Akhter, an eighth grader of Shalaipur High School said the project has changed their mindset about some taboos surrounding girl’s health and hygiene.

Speaking at one session of the workshop on March 15, Dr Dilara Begum, the librarian of East West University in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, told the girls: “There’s no reason to be sad when you reach puberty with some physical changes. Don’t be sad …it’s time to celebrate.”

She urged the teachers to work together to break prejudices that a wife cannot sleep with her husband during her menstruation and touch anyone while praying. “We need to make people aware and share the realities of life and its cycle to build a beautiful society taking women along,” she told the audience.

Strengthening women’s positions, and giving them the opportunity to fully participate in society is necessary if we are to achieve the SDG targets. Credit: Farooq Ahmed/IPS

By Chris Williams and Kersti Strandqvist
NEW YORK, May 14 2015 (IPS)

Every month, more than two billion women around the world menstruate, and yet the topic is still shrouded by a veil of silence. While some girls celebrate their period as the first step into womanhood, many girls in developing or emerging countries are shocked and ashamed of their monthly cycles.

Recent studies have found that over 70 percent of girls in India had no idea what was happening to them when they started their first period; 50 percent of girls in Iran believe that menstruation is a disease; and over 50 percent of girls in Ethiopia miss between one and four days of school per month due to menstruation.In every country, the veil of silence around menstruation contributes to discrimination that can hold women back in their personal lives and professional careers.

Even in the United States, where menstruation management is taught in schools and girls typically have access to the necessary resources and infrastructure, the topic remains a taboo, preferably not addressed in polite circles. Real-life examples abound.

In March, Instagram twice removed a photo of a fully clothed woman with two visible spots of blood, because it violated their ‘community guidelines.’ In January, tennis star Heather Watson shocked the world by ascribing her Australian open defeat to ‘girl things.’

In every country, the veil of silence around menstruation contributes to discrimination that can hold women back in their personal lives and professional careers.

It is time for the global community to break its silence on menstruation so that women and girls can discuss the topic without shame, and reap the rewards for their health, education and quality of life.

The taboo surrounding menstruation is a barrier to equal participation and opportunities for women. More importantly, this neglect of a woman’s need to manage their menstruation inside and outside the home is a violation of a host of human rights – in many countries, menstruating women are banned from praying, cooking, or sleeping near their family.

Current research shows that menstrual education in every country continues to provide girls with mixed messages; on the one hand it is a normal, natural event, however girls are also taught that it should be hidden.

This taboo on female development has also had unintended consequences for U.S. aid priorities – according to development experts, the U.S. government will remain reluctant to fund education initiatives in developing or emerging countries until there is a proven link between toilets in schools or menstrual management education to an improvement in attendance rates or performance in school.

The countdown has begun to the United Nations release of the Sustainable Development Goals, and women’s empowerment is expected to take center stage as a cross-cutting issue that will lift the development of society as a whole.

Strengthening women’s positions, and giving them the opportunity to fully participate in society is necessary if we are to achieve these targets.

The ambitious goal of ensuring equality for women and girls requires a multi-stakeholder approach, with collaboration from communities, government, U.N. agencies, private sector, academia, NGOs, media and others. It is time for all sectors to work together to ensure that menstruation is far higher on the development agenda.

By leveraging public-private partnerships, a unique combination of funding can ensure that market research from the private sector can efficiently contribute to the effectiveness of aid and investment.

This week, the global movement to break the silence on menstruation comes to the U.S. as Team SCA, an all-women crew of sailors participating in the round-the-world Volvo Ocean Race, docks in Newport, Rhode Island. The team is promoting the message of women’s empowerment.

With support from the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), a U.N. body dedicated to achieving safe sanitation and hygiene for the most vulnerable through community-led approaches, Team SCA has participated in several menstrual hygiene management training sessions during the race.

Practical, sustainable change for women and girls can be achieved through research, innovation and education. Governments, community leaders, opinion leaders, and global citizens must speak out to change attitudes, upend customs that restrain menstruating women and girls, and promote basic education about periods.

Menstrual hygiene management is only the beginning but it is a critical first step… we need to break the silence across the female lifecycle, from puberty to menopause to old-age.

Eliminating these taboos is an international responsibility, and an opportunity for the U.S. to lead by example, by increasing awareness of this monthly global human rights violation, as well as holding an open and honest discussion about its own taboos.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Students from Great Horizon Secondary School in Uganda's rural Kyakayege village pose proudly with their re-usable menstrual pads after a reproductive health presentation at their school. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

By Amy Fallon
KAMPALA, Aug 15 2014 (IPS)

When Peninah Mamayi got her period last January, she was scared, confused and embarrassed. But like thousands of other girls in the developing world who experience menarche having no idea what menstruation is, Mamayi, who lives with her sister-in-law in a village in Tororo, eastern Uganda, kept quiet.

“When I went to the toilet I had blood on my knickers,” she told IPS. “I was wondering what was coming out and I was so scared I ran inside the house and stayed there crying.

“I just used rags. I feared telling anybody.”For girls, “pads are as good as schoolbooks” -- Dennis Ntale, 18, a student at co-ed Mengo Senior School in Kampala, Uganda

Not having access to or being able to afford disposable sanitary pads or tampons like millions of their Western counterparts, desperate Ugandan girls will resort to using the local ebikokooma leaves, paper, old clothes and other materials as substitutes or even, as a health minister told a menstrual hygiene management conference this week, sitting in the sand until that time of the month is over.

“We always try to give them something to use at school, just at school,” Lydia Nabazzine, a teacher at Mulago Private Primary School in Kampala, where about 300 out of 500 students are female, told IPS.

“When they go home we don’t know how they go about it, because we cannot afford funding up to home level.”

But the 2012 Study on menstrual management in Uganda, conducted by the Netherlands Development Organisation (SNV) and IRC International Wash and Sanitation Centre in seven Ugandan districts, found that over 50 percent of senior female teachers confirmed there was no provision for menstrual pads for schoolgirls.

When some girls have their period, they may miss up to 20 percent of their total school year due to the humiliation of not having protection, according to separate research from the World Bank. This profoundly affects their academic potential.

“Those days when I was menstruating I could be absent for up to five days a month until menstruation had stopped,” recalled Mayami.

It’s a continent-wide problem. The United Nations Children’s Fund says one in 10 African girls skipped school during menstruation. Some drop out entirely because they lack access to effective sanitary products.

A number of recent initiatives have, however, tried to address this.

On May 28 this year, the world marked the first Menstrual Hygiene Day to help “break the silence and build awareness about the fundamental role that good menstrual hygiene management (MHM) plays in enabling women and girls to reach their full potential.”

On Aug. 14 – 15, East Africa’s first national menstrual hygiene management conference, which has the theme “breaking the silence on menstruation, keep girls in school,” has been taking place in Uganda’s capital Kampala.

At least 100 schoolteachers, schoolgirls – and boys – NGOs, including Network for Water and Sanitation (NETWAS) Uganda, civil society members and others are taking part in the two-day event. They’re calling on the government to put in place a menstrual hygiene management school policy. They also want the government to provide free sanitary pads to girls in schools, like neighbouring Kenya has done.

Despite keeping silent about the horrors of menstruation for months, Mamayi shared with the conference attendees the solution she found to that time of the month.

The student, now 13, had been walking home from school when some older pupils told her, “madam [the teacher] said menstruation is a normal thing for every girl.”

“So I asked them about it,” she told IPS.

“Now I’m using AFRIPads.”

Invented by the eponymous Uganda-based social business, AFRIPads are washable cloth sanitary towels designed to provide effective and hygienic menstrual protection for up to a year.

Mamayi said the re-useable pads work out to be 5,500 Ugandan shillings (2.11 dollars) a year, compared to the 30,000 shillings (11.49 dollars) that disposable pads would have set her back.

“Now when I go somewhere [when I have my period] I sit and am comfortable,” said Mamayi. “I’m not bothered by anything. I don’t worry whether I’ve got anything on my skirt. I don’t miss school.”

She added: “I’m going to tell my friends that menstruation is a normal thing in girls.

“I want my friend also to be free, to tell their parents to buy for them pads. Let them not fear.”

Understanding and Managing Menstruation, was launched by Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports at East Africa’s first national menstrual hygiene management conference. The 50-page reader has photos and a section on how to make reusable pads at home, and sections for parents, guardians, peers, friends and schoolboys. Credit: Amy Fallon/IPS

Breaking the culture of silence around menstruation is the aim of a new book, Understanding and Managing Menstruation, launched by Uganda’s Ministry of Education and Sports at the conference. The 50-page reader has photos and a section on how to make reusable pads at home, and sections for parents, guardians, peers, friends and schoolboys.

Maggie Kasiko, a gender technical advisor at the Ministry of Education and Sports, told IPS that the government hoped the book would reach as many students, teachers and parents across the country as possible.

“Not many girls have the opportunities to have their mothers and aunties around, so they start their menstruation without knowing,” she said, adding many parents and relatives were busy trying to earn a living for their families.

Dennis Ntale, 18, a senior five student at co-ed Mengo Senior School in Kampala, said he didn’t know what menstruation was when he encountered a fellow student with her period in class earlier this year, and tried to comfort her. It was only sometime later when he relayed the incident to his male friends and they told him she was “undergoing her MP [menstrual period].”

“They’re [teachers] not teaching this to the boys in schools,” Ntale told IPS.

“I believe boys should be informed about this because there are many of them out there who have no idea about this.”

He said for girls, “pads are as good as schoolbooks”.

“If you don’t have that pad she won’t be able to do a thing,” Ntale said. “[We should] make sure she has what will keep her in school.”

Kasiko said the Ministry of Education and Sports was continuing to ensure schools had separate facilities for boys and girls, with the girls having washrooms and changing rooms where they could bathe and change, had access to clean water, extra pads and Panadol.

But she said she didn’t see the government providing free pads to girls “in the short-term or the long-term”.

“Starting to distribute sanitary towels to each and every girl, every month, is quite a cost for the ministry when you look at all the other areas that the ministry needs to take care of,” she said.

“That, our guidelines for Universal Primary Education (UPE) is very clear, is a role of parents. It’s sanitary wear. Just like you buy a panty for your child, you should be responsible for buying a sanitary towel for your child.

Kasiko added: “But we’ll support the parents and work together with the parents to give them knowledge to ensure the environment is clean and girls stay in school.”

Edited by: Nalisha Adams

The writer can be contacted on Twitter @amyfallon 

Nasreen Jehan, a high school student in eastern India, studies a leaflet on menstrual hygiene. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
BETTIAH, India, May 28 2014 (IPS)

Fifteen-year-old Nasreen Jehan, a student in the eastern Indian state of Bihar, proudly flaunts a yellow and red beaded bracelet encircling her wrist. This humble accessory, she tells IPS, is her most treasured possession.

“It helps me keep track of my menstrual calendar,” says the 9^th-grader, who attends a government-run, all-girls school in a town called Bettiah. “Also, it helps me talk about menstruation with my friends.”

Of the 24 small beads that comprise the delicate adornment, six are read, symbolising the days of her monthly period. Jehan made the bracelet herself at a menstrual hygiene workshop in Bettiah last year, organised by Nirmal Bharat Yatra (NBY) – a nationwide sanitation campaign spearheaded by the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC).

Educators at the workshop talked Jehan and her peers through the biological process of menstruation, offering tips on how to properly wash and dry menstrual cloths if sanitary napkins are unavailable.

“My mother and my aunt never stepped out of the house when they had their periods. That was our family tradition." -- Soumya Selvi, a 10th-grader in southern India
Finally, they gave Jehan the most important message of all: that menstruation is just as natural as hunger or sweating, and that there is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of.

It is rudimentary advice, but crucial in a country like India, where menstruation has long been perceived as a social taboo. In many parts of the country, a woman on her period becomes essentially “untouchable” – banned from cooking, handling water or entering places of worship.

According to a study undertaken by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) back in 2012, some 225 million adolescent girls attend one of the 1.37 million schools spread across the country. Of them, roughly 66 percent have no knowledge of menstruation before they reach puberty.

A full 88 percent of these girls do not have access to what the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calls WASH facilities: water, sanitation and hygiene, including soap or sanitary supplies.

According to data compiled by AC Nielsen in 2011, the average Indian adolescent girl (between the ages of 12 and 18) misses 50 days of school a year as a result of inadequate facilities, or a lack of awareness of menstruation. Some 23 percent of all schoolgirls – over 50 million in total – drop out of school altogether once they hit puberty.

Of India’s roughly 335 million women, a mere 12 percent have access to sanitary napkins.

Because the subject is seldom discussed, even among families, peers or community members, many women resort to extremely unsanitary options during their period, including the use of unsanitised cloth, ashes or sand. Reproductive tract infections (RTIs) are 70 percent more common among women who engage in these practices.

This year, for the first time, the world will mark May 28 as Menstrual Hygiene Day, designed to address the very challenges countries like India are facing.

Against this backdrop, the NYB campaign is not only timely, it is essential if India hopes to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), development targets set by the world body in 2000 and set to expire in 2015.

Also known as the Great WASH Yatra, NYB aims to “improve policy and practice in an extremely challenging and taboo area of sanitation and hygiene: Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM).”

Launched in 2012, the 150,000-dollar campaign – generously supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – will continue until 2016.

Already it has reached over 12,000 women and girls around the country, an overwhelming majority of who are adolescent students who say that being empowered to break the silence around menstruation is making a huge difference in their lives.

This process, though, has not been easy. Urmila Chanam, a Bangalore-based MHM educator who travelled to six states during the early stages of the campaign, said the stigma against menstruation runs deep, having been embedded for years in the minds of men and women alike.

“When a girl in India gets her first period, everyone tells her that she is impure because the blood flowing out of her is dirty,” Chanam told IPS.

“So, she grows up convinced that this is a shameful thing that she must not discuss. The first challenge of an educator is to have the girl overcome this sense of shame and fear. Everything else comes after that,” added Chanam, who also runs a web-based campaign called ‘Breaking the Silence’ that encourages both women and men to openly discuss the issue.

The determined efforts of a handful of NGOs and activists like Chanam have set the wheels of a full-blown movement in motion, with thousands of young women across the country coming forward to share their experiences.

A fine example of this is Soumya Selvi, a 10^th-grade student in a girls’ school in Srirangam, a town located about 320 km south of Chennai city in southern India.

Three years ago, Selvi and her fellow classmates were privy to a UNESCO-led reproductive health campaign, and became virtual ambassadors for the issue. Selvi alone has shared her knowledge with nearly 50 other girls in her school and her neighborhood. She has also not missed a single day of school during her period.

“My mother and my aunt never stepped out of the house when they had their periods,” she told IPS. “That was our family tradition. But, I told them, ‘this will happen to me until I am 50 years old, perhaps older. Should I sit at home all my life?’

“After that, they never asked me to miss school,” she recounted with a wide smile.

Still, experts agree that independent efforts can only achieve so much. Without government support, it could take decades to reach every woman and girl who remains fearful and silent. What is needed, they say, are inclusive and targeted training programmes that can help scale up impacts of individual campaigns.

Mukti Bosco, an eminent activist and founder of Healing Fields, a Hyderabad-based NGO that works with schools on menstrual hygiene management, told IPS it is time for campaigns to target female teachers and mothers, who can “instill positive behaviour in the girls.”

Others emphasise the role of communication as in invaluable tool in spreading the message. Sinu Joseph, a Bangalore-based MHM educator, has so far trained 8,000 girls across the southwestern state of Karnataka using an animation video.

“Young girls often ask, ‘Why can’t I visit a temple when I have my period?’” Joseph told IPS. “To answer such questions, one has to first know the cultural history. [Educators] must earn the trust of women and girls, so that they are comfortable enough to speak. Then they… not only learn, but also feel empowered.”

(END)