Here’s the situation

Girls and women around the world often resort to rags and leaves to manage their monthly flow. To avoid embarrassment, they skip school, drop out, become child brides, and have successive unintended pregnancies.

Without knowledge of how their body works, they are unprepared for their periods, sexual intimacy, and pregnancy. This lack of information causes fear and lowered self-confidence.

Thirteen years

Girls as young as thirteen years old drop out of school, become married, and even pregnant

Christine Glidden, Founder of Women To Be

Twelve million

Every year, 12 million girls will marry before age 18. In Nepal, 40% of girls are married by age 18.

Quote from Girls Not Brides (.org)

Five hundred million

At least 500 million girls and women globally lack adequate facilities for managing their periods

UNICEF and WHO, 2015 report

We change that.

By providing girls with reusable sanitary pads and reproductive health education, we work to elevate the quality of their lives.

When a girl stays in school, she learns a skill, delays marriage, and becomes an economic driver for herself and her community. She takes a stand against violence, has the confidence to lead, and ends the patriarchal system that has defeated her for too long.

That’s Women To Be.

How we help

We support and educate the reproductive health of girls and women in Nepal, Mexico, Zambia, and the Navajo Nation of New Mexico.

We distribute ‘kits’ of washable sanitary pads and underwear.

Effective menstrual management is a basic human right. It levels the gender equity field.

We provide reproductive health classes.

Knowledge is power. We prepare girls for menstruation, sexual intimacy, and more control over their life options.

We establish sewing centers to fabricate our ‘kits’ locally.

We train, employ, and teach leadership skills to women to ensure a sustainable future.

We ensure environmentally friendly solutions with our reusable products.

There’s nothing to throw away in places where there’s no place to throw it.

Our ‘Kits’

We distribute reusable kits to girls and women who do not have access to disposable menstrual products. Each kit contains 8 sanitary pads, 2 ‘wrappers’ with waterproof barriers, a washcloth, a drawstring bag, and 2 ziplock bags for daily storage of used pads which are rinsed and dried overnight. Learn more

We remain unafraid of blood when we shed it for power

When we shed it for birth, we run

We flee her miracle, yet we find comfort in man-made mortality

when it would cost us nothing but education and compassion

to keep all her dignity inside us.

 

Hakeem Bellamy, former Albuquerque Poet Laureate, from Rites of Passage

Contact us

csglidden@swcp.com