Help End Period Poverty in Lebanon
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Dignity for Women in Lebanon: Help End Period Poverty
Every year we travel to Lebanon, to visit family, loved ones and friends. We are the expats, the (children of) migrants, the ones who went away. Every year our luggage is filled with gifts, sweets and chocolates. We giftwrap our much anticipated reunions and fill them with laughter and nice things. Until now, because this year everything is different. This time our families, our loved ones and our friends beg us to fill our suitcases with necessary items: medicines and...sanitary pads.
With prices soaring in crisis-hit Lebanon many women and girls can no longer afford sanitary products. Reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadly Beirut port explosion and a plummeting economy that pushed half of the population below the poverty line, Lebanese women, female migrant workers and refugees have now been forced to deal with a 500 percent increase in the prices of menstrual products.
The government has subsidized essential goods including medicine, fuel and flour, but failed to include pads on its list. The (basic) needs of women are, yet again, overlooked.
Right now 76.5% of females in Lebanon have difficulty in accessing sanitary products while two-thirds of adolescent girls have no means of purchasing them. This is forcing many to resort to impractical or unsafe alternatives.
Women in Lebanon went through a double explosion in the Beirut port, an economic collapse, they are fighting COVID, they’re keeping their families afloat. They deserve more, no woman, no girl should go through this.
In the absence of state support, the Dawrati (My Period) initiative was launched, a grassroots Lebanese NGO which distributes free menstrual products to women in need. Yet they aren’t able to meet demand because donations have declined significantly since the start of the crisis.
This is where we - you and I - step in, we can help!
The power lies in the collective: donate now and help us to empower women across Lebanon.
So if you have the heart and the means: please please please donate.
Any amount is welcome, no matter how big or small.
Everything will go to Dawrati. For this project they will be working together with Beit el Baraka, who will help with the distribution to reach as many women and girls as possible.
Spread the word, spread the support, sharing is caring. Always (pun intended)
From our hearts to yours: thank you
In the meantime we find comfort in the words of Lebanese poet Nadia Tueni:
Women of my country,
a common light hardens your bodies,
and a common darkness lets them rest
in a soft elegy of change.
A common suffering cracks your lips,
and your eyes have been set by the same unique jeweler.
You reassure mountains,
make men believe they are men
convince ashes of their own fertility
and tell the land that it will never pass away.
Women of my country,
even in chaos you discover what endures.
Photo credit: Michele Aoun (@shamelesslights)
More info about:
Dawrati here
Beit el Baraka here
The situation in Lebanon:
https://www.albawaba.com/node/womens-sanitary-products-under-hammer-lebanons-collapsing-economy-1436564
https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2021/Jul-14/521816-most-lebanese-women-struggle-to-afford-period-supplies-survey.ashx
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/world/middleeast/lebanon-economic-crisis.html
Every year we travel to Lebanon, to visit family, loved ones and friends. We are the expats, the (children of) migrants, the ones who went away. Every year our luggage is filled with gifts, sweets and chocolates. We giftwrap our much anticipated reunions and fill them with laughter and nice things. Until now, because this year everything is different. This time our families, our loved ones and our friends beg us to fill our suitcases with necessary items: medicines and...sanitary pads.
With prices soaring in crisis-hit Lebanon many women and girls can no longer afford sanitary products. Reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, the deadly Beirut port explosion and a plummeting economy that pushed half of the population below the poverty line, Lebanese women, female migrant workers and refugees have now been forced to deal with a 500 percent increase in the prices of menstrual products.
The government has subsidized essential goods including medicine, fuel and flour, but failed to include pads on its list. The (basic) needs of women are, yet again, overlooked.
Right now 76.5% of females in Lebanon have difficulty in accessing sanitary products while two-thirds of adolescent girls have no means of purchasing them. This is forcing many to resort to impractical or unsafe alternatives.
Women in Lebanon went through a double explosion in the Beirut port, an economic collapse, they are fighting COVID, they’re keeping their families afloat. They deserve more, no woman, no girl should go through this.
In the absence of state support, the Dawrati (My Period) initiative was launched, a grassroots Lebanese NGO which distributes free menstrual products to women in need. Yet they aren’t able to meet demand because donations have declined significantly since the start of the crisis.
This is where we - you and I - step in, we can help!
The power lies in the collective: donate now and help us to empower women across Lebanon.
So if you have the heart and the means: please please please donate.
Any amount is welcome, no matter how big or small.
Everything will go to Dawrati. For this project they will be working together with Beit el Baraka, who will help with the distribution to reach as many women and girls as possible.
Spread the word, spread the support, sharing is caring. Always (pun intended)
From our hearts to yours: thank you
In the meantime we find comfort in the words of Lebanese poet Nadia Tueni:
Women of my country,
a common light hardens your bodies,
and a common darkness lets them rest
in a soft elegy of change.
A common suffering cracks your lips,
and your eyes have been set by the same unique jeweler.
You reassure mountains,
make men believe they are men
convince ashes of their own fertility
and tell the land that it will never pass away.
Women of my country,
even in chaos you discover what endures.
Photo credit: Michele Aoun (@shamelesslights)
More info about:
Dawrati here
Beit el Baraka here
The situation in Lebanon:
https://www.albawaba.com/node/womens-sanitary-products-under-hammer-lebanons-collapsing-economy-1436564
https://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Lebanon-News/2021/Jul-14/521816-most-lebanese-women-struggle-to-afford-period-supplies-survey.ashx
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/05/world/middleeast/lebanon-economic-crisis.html
Organizer
Layla El-Dekmak
Organizer
Antwerp
