Meet SHE Global Health Interns

Please welcome our four SHE Global Health Interns.  We’re incredibly excited to have such a diverse team working from a variety of geographic locations—New York City; Brunswick, Maine; Chicago, Illinois; and the Canadian Arctic— to support SHE Rwanda’s Health Education and Advocacy efforts as well as SHE’s Global Health projects. 

Meet Sereena, Del, Natalie and Natalie! Their perspectives are unique and their passion for global health is evident. You will get to learn more about each of our interns in the near future! 

Sereena Singh is currently an MPH student at New York University concentrating in Community and International Health. For her undergrad, she attended Rutgers University graduating with Bachelor’s in Public Health. Initially, her interest in Public Health began at Rutgers and her passion for women’s health peaked ever further throughout her studies.

Sereena has been working at the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine as a clinical research coordinator for about 2 years now. She recently worked at UNICEF India on international development issues for local villages in Bhopal. In her free time, she enjoys arts and crafts, especially DIY projects. She also has a guilty pleasure for reality shows, and will watch almost anything!

Delaram Farshad recently completed her MPH focusing on Maternal & Child, at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Prior to joining the team, Delaram worked with UNICEF NY HQ- Nutrition & Health Unit and was involved in various community nutrition and rural health projects abroad in India, Swaziland and Bolivia. She is passionate about global health advocacy, women's health and community empowerment. Currently, Delaram is living in the Arctic region of Canada, working to promote health, community development and learning traditional Indigenous culture. Delaram's love for diversity and curiosity for travel, has afforded her opportunities to work in diverse rural and cross cultural settings, interacting with people from all walks of life. In her spare time, she loves to exercise her creativity, interact with people from different cultures and practice yoga.

Meet one of our ten pilot schools: Gs Gikaya

Gs Gikaya is one of the 10 schools that will be buying our pads during our industrial-scale pilot.  It's considered one of the model schools with girl-friendly sanitation facilities compared to many of the schools we have visited. This school is also renowned also for their warm welcoming.

A warm welcome from Gs Gikaya students!

When Nadia, Tash, and I arrived, we were welcomed by kids running towards you to receive you with a hug and sweet songs.

SHE will be providing Menstrual Health Management training at each of our ten pilot schools, but before we begin training, we needed to revisit the school campus so we can tailor our curriculum based on the school's sanitation facilities. 

Gs Giyaka is equipped with a girls' room that contains basic materials that a girl should use when she get her menses at school and is unprepared. Because this school is led by a woman, the issues of menstruation seem better well addressed than at other schools. The school teachers discuss the topic after class and instruct younger girls how to manage their menstruation, but challenges to fully support girls' menstrual needs still exist. 

SHE's Nadia with Gs Gikaya's headmistress in the school's girl's room

The headmistress reported that even though they have pads in stock to give to a girl who is unprepared when her period arrives, many of girls still don’t have means to purchase a pack of pads by themselves. Therefore, they sometimes try to game the system by having their friends ask for pads on their behalf so they can have enough products. Painkillers are also not available at school, so sometimes the headmistress allow girls to return home if they have too much pain. 

Supporting girls' menstrual needs at school will not be solved simply by providing access to more pads. That's why SHE is instigating at the national level to ensure that budgets and resources are increased at the school level, so girls will be provided increased access to education, menstrual products, and services.

I wonder whether schools led by women care more about menstruation issues or if it's just this school that makes an effort to support its girls and boys equally to help them stay in school. In any regard, we can't wait to learn more from the girls of Gs Gikaya!

- Gerardine, Marketing and Research Officer

The HAHA Beat: Menstrual Talk Hits the Rwandan Airwaves

Hi all,

This is Jackie, SHE Rwanda's Advocacy and Policy Manager, and I am excited to share an update from the HAHA (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) Team. We had our first live radio talk show on May 13th that was co-sponsored by our partners, VSO, to raise awareness on menstrual health issues in Rwanda.

I was joined by my colleague Nadia, SHE's Health and Hygiene Officer, Mukasine Caroline, a member of the Maternal and Child Health Department of the Ministry of Health and Uwimbabazi Sylvie, from the Ministry of Education. 

At the beginning of the talk show, every participant was given time to express what they are doing in terms of supporting girls in to manage this issue; I explained how SHE works in partnership with other partner organizations and government agencies to raise awareness, provide training, and work with schools in order to break the silence around menstruation and menstrual hygiene and also to share best practices of menstrual hygiene management (MHM). SHE also talked about its advocacy in terms of tax exemption so as to have affordable and access to sanitary products.

-    The Ministry of Health talked about how they raise awareness of MHM within its reproductive health sensitization programs, while the Ministry of Education confirmed its support of MHM by promoting the addition of girls’ rooms at schools and its basic requirements at all primary and secondary schools. They also talked about its financial support of MHM through its allocation of sanitation funds to schools.

We changed topics during the talk show to discuss how we menstrual health and hygiene awareness:

• Is menstruation really a challenge in schools?
• What is the response from the Ministry of Health to it?
• What are some of the inputs form the Ministry of Education to address the challenge?
• An overview of menstruation and its current management at the school setting
• Answering the audience's questions around menstruation

Below are some of the questions asked and this clearly shows the menstrual hygiene education is critical and needs to be widespread since taboos and incorrect beliefs around the topic is still an issue: 

• Most parents still consider menstruation as a sickness and often keep their daughters at home. Several of them called and asked whether their daughter is sick or if this something normal. 
• What are those days that one would consider to be safe days in one's menstrual cycle?
• When is it likely for a girl to become pregnant? Is it really safe that if you have sex with a girl during her period, that she will never become pregnant?
• Why is it that some girls experience serious pain during their menstruation while others do not?
•  What are some medicines or ways of reducing the pain during periods?
• Are there some other products that one can use apart from pads during menstruation since pads are expensive?
• Why is it that some women have their period/menstruation but at time do not give birth or never become pregnant?

•       Another person called Maniracyiza, called just to say thanks for the discussion.

-   Based on questions asked from the audience, from the community and some more that were not answered due to time constraints, we would like to raise our voices as a call for action to all other organizations in support of girls' issues to join SHE's efforts in one or all three ways: (1) to raise awareness around MHM; (2) to lobby for policy change in schools as a way of raising MHM knowledge; and (3) to ask policy makers to waive taxes on pads so as to have them accessible and affordable.

Our next steps are to follow up with Radio Rwanda because they agreed to offer us more radio airtime and to host a show about menstrual hygiene again since there were so many questions still unanswered from the public. Exciting!

Thank you,

Jackie 

SHE's Advocacy and Policy Manager

The HAHA Beat: Why Menstrual Hygiene Education Needs to be Girl-Friendly

Check out why Health and Hygiene Officer Nadia thinks that menstrual education is not "girl-friendly" enough and how SHE is instigating for these changes at the school level:

"With the support of VSO Rwanda, SHE conducted menstrual health and hygiene awareness programs across the Ngoma District within the month of March.

In our Rwandan culture, as in other parts of the world, menstruation is still viewed as a taboo, making it difficult for parents, teachers and children comfortable to tackle the matter in details. Some parents would say nothing at all about menstruation or at the very least, would ask someone else to explain menstruation to their daughters, which has resulted in misinformation about menstruation.

Health and Hygiene Officer Nadia at one of our 8 awareness sessions in the Ngoma District. 

With all this confusion about how to properly manage their period, girls miss up to 3-5 school days each month, while their male colleagues proceed with their studies, thus making our young sisters, future mothers and leaders of Rwanda at risk of falling behind at school, having low marks, and not having the same achievements as their brothers.

Students therefore have to rely on teachers for menstrual hygiene education, but all they learn is about the biological changes that occur with the onset of menstruation. Unfortunately, menstrual hygiene management part is not covered within it. Girls, as well as boys, need to have that information, so they are prepared once menses does begin and to take it easy; and most importantly, to know that menstruation is NOT a disease or is something shameful! This was our overview when we lead these awareness workshops.

The fact is increased access to menstrual hygiene education is needed and it needs to be presented in a child and girl-friendly manner. If it’s not done in a girl-friendly approach, girls will continue to receive incorrect menstrual information. Some of the myths or incorrect information that I heard from the girls include:

"If you sleep with a man while menstruating, you will never have painful periods”

or

"If you have sex while menstruating, you will never get pregnant"

These girls’ voices are calling out for SHE support. They have the right to know that menstruation is not a disease or a curse as some people believe - it is a normal physiological process the body undergoes.That is why SHE is instigating for increased access to menstrual education and materials at the national level!

SHE is taking the lead to educate girls about MHM through their teachers and parents. Will you join us? Girls are demanding to 'know more!'

I extend gratitude to the Ngoma District and their schools; as a result we were able to provide our MHM awareness workshop to over 1100 students.

I am also most grateful to the girls and their teachers for talking frankly about menstruation in the school setting with us. Girls, we love you, and we believe you deserve to manage your menses healthy and hygienically."

Cheers,

Nadia Hitimana 

Health and Hygiene Officer"

The HAHA Beat: Ensuring Girls' Rights in Education

A HAHA (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) Update from Advocacy and Policy Manager Jackie Mupenzi:

SHE was invited to attend the annual kick-off meeting of the Girls' Education Working Group. The meeting was hosted by the Wellspring Foundation in Nyarutarama-Kigali.

We had a chance to interact with all of the stakeholders that are invested in improving girl's education. Members include Plan Rwanda (Co-chair), Girl Hub (Co-chair), Rwanda Girls Initiative in Gashora, FAWE, Care International, National Union of Disabilities, VVOB, ActionAID, EDC, Imbuto Foundation, UNICEF and CHF.

We can't wait to collaborate and stay tuned to see what happens!

The HAHA beat: Periodic (haha) Updates from our Health and Hygiene Advocacy team

While our industrial-pilot is in motion, our HAHA team (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) team is also laying the groundwork to ensure long-term access to menstrual hygiene education and products (including our SHE LaunchPad) .

To make sure you're up-to-date on all things health and hygiene-related, check out our blog for The HAHA Beat. Here's the latest from our Advocacy and Policy Manager Jackie.

----------------------
Hi all,

It's been an exciting 2 months for the HAHA team! With Nadia on board, we worked together to lead hygiene education and awareness programs across Rwanda in partnership with VSO. 

Jackie (with mic) leading an advocacy awareness session.
Photo Credit: Perttu Saralampi

Our final awareness program at a youth center in Kigali was one of our most memorable events, namely because we invited 15 students from the Duha Complex School in Rwamagana to perform a skit on menstrual hygiene education! 

The Duha students are one of SHE's biggest fans! We trained senior level students and their teachers about menstrual hygiene and they loved our program so much that they even founded their own SHE student club! 

The Duha students provide menstrual and reproductive health education by writing and performing their own skits that are then performed at school and within the community. It was a great to have youths teach each other via acting!

Bridget Mukanyandwi, a teacher at the Duha School, remarked that the budget allocated for pads was insufficient as not all girls can have access to them. She said some students end up using rags because they can't afford pads and the schools don't receive enough pads for use by their students. 

Mukanyandwi said that most children start their periods around their primary five or at age twelve. She also called upon parents to also play a role in telling their daughters about menstruation early enough and not leave to it all to teachers. 

She also noted that some parents, especially in villages, still hold negative cultural perceptions whereby they believe it's a taboo to talk to their daughters about menstrual health, therefore calling upon them to break the silence and educate their children. 

As a much added benefit to raising national awareness, the New Times Rwanda featured our event and an interview with me. Please check it out: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?a=13582&i=15320

More eyes and ears at the national policy level are on menstrual hygiene education. This is great news!

Thank You, 

Jackie