(Photo Credit: Edward Ahonobadha/CARE)
Written by: Kerstin Blidi, Fundraising Coordinator, CARE International
Harriet is a 25-year-old resident of Impevi, a settlement for South Sudanese refugees in Arua District, Uganda, opened in February 2017. She arrived at Impevi in March 2017, together with her husband, her mother, and her father, as well as her two small daughters, the youngest barely 3 months old at the time. The family had fled their home in South Sudan, walking for days on end to reach safety in Uganda.
“It was very hot. We started walking in the morning, but had to rest often during the day as the children were very small,” says Harriet. “I had to carry the little one the whole way.”
Before the war, Harriet worked as a nursery school teacher but with her qualifications not recognized in Uganda, she had to look for other work. Two weeks after arriving at Imvepi she took a position with CARE, motivated by wanting to do something for the camp community.
Today, Harriet is working on a pilot project with CARE, to distribute menstrual cups to 100 of the settlement’s female residents. Menstrual cups are an alternative to sanitary pads with the added benefit of being reusable for up to ten years. The cups, made of silicone, produce no waste, and their cleaning requires some, albeit little, water. ECHO is financing this pilot project and supporting CARE to test the feasibility of using menstrual cups, both in terms of cultural acceptance and access to water, carefully assessing if use is safe in contexts where limited water is accessible.
“The menstrual cup changed my life,” says Harriet. “At first, my husband was not convinced. He wanted to be sure that it is not harmful for me. But then I explained to him how it worked and he was grateful that I had received one. Now, when I get my period, I feel completely free and clean. I can go about my business and I am no longer stuck at home.”
Harriet is part of a small group of women trained by CARE and local partner WOMENA in the benefits and use of menstrual cups. The price of sanitary pads alone makes them unaffordable to many of the refugees.
“Buying the pads on a monthly basis is a huge task for most women and girls in the camps,” explains Harriet. “Most families have little money to spend on numerous needs and buying the sanitary towels is least important. It forces many girls to miss school at the times when they are having their cycles.”
More information:
Since the spike in violence in South Sudan in July 2016, there has been a major influx of hundreds of thousands South Sudanese refugees in northwestern Uganda making it the lead refugee hosting country in Africa. There are over one million refugees from South Sudan and DRC in Uganda. Women and children make up more than 80 per cent of the refugee population. Due to the impact of the conflict on communities and households, women often take on the arduous displacement journey to seek refuge in Uganda without male relatives, carrying and caring for many children on the way. CARE Uganda supports refugees with funding from Austrian Development Agency, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ECHO, UNFPA, GAC.
For more on our work in Uganda, click here.
Photos on CARE*Images:
https://www.careimages.org/?r=42495
https://www.careimages.org/?r=42497