Girl Power
Posted on April 10, 2010
RUMBECK, Sudan – In Dinka culture in southern Sudan, girls are rarely allowed to attend school.
They are needed at home for cleaning, cooking, fetching water and caring for younger siblings. In some communities, the girl is worth fewer cows – the payment of the bride price – if she has finished her schooling. It is said she is harder to control if she has school training.
A young girl has to overcome all these obstacles for an education. It’s made harder because she has to miss a week of school every month because of her menstrual cycle.
“We have to stay at home until the bleeding stops,” said Mary Apande, a 17-year-old Dinka girl who just finished the eighth grade. “We missed lessons in school because of bleeding.”
In southern Sudan, females do not have access to sanitary napkins or othgr feminine hygiene products.The women and young girls sit on the ground while they bleed and then cover the blood with dirt. Some also use layers of underwear to hide their menstrual period.
Now, because of a feminine cloth project funded by Baptist Global Response (a ministry partner of IMB), Apande and her cousin, Mary Adut, do not miss school anymore. They can also go to the market during their bleeding.
“I feel very happy,” said 18-year-old Adut, who also just finished the eighth grade. “Now I am able to do everything, and when I am bleeding others can not see it.”
The cousins attended a training at their school on how to make the feminine cloths.
“The feminine cloths are reusable and reproducible,” said Laura C., a two-year IMB missionary who helped lead the training.
The cloths consist of a hand towel and a fabric pouch sewn to two strips of fabric. The pouch holds the towel, and the two strips can be tied around the waist to hold the pouch in place. The towel can be taken out and washed or replaced.
For six months, Laura and her teammate, Jamie E., taught girls in groups of 30 to 70 in daylong trainings. In the end, more than 880 girls in seven schools learned how to make the feminine cloths.
BGR provided more than $6,500 to supply each girl with enough material to make two feminine cloths. Laura and Jamie encouraged the girls to teach others.
These girls are not confined to their homes anymore.
Though Laura and Jamie finished teaching schoolgirls how to make the hygiene cloths, they now train women in local churches to sew them.
In one training, the women sat on log benches under a tree, chatting and sewing the feminine cloths. They laughed in embarrassment at the demonstration.
“We showed them what the cloth was for and they laughed and were surprised,” Jamie said. “Then they all clapped and said, ‘It’s a good work.’”
Jamie and Laura have started each training, both with the schoolgirls and the older women, by asking if they can share a story from God’s Word. They share either the story of Nicodemus or the story of the woman who bled for 12 years before she touched Jesus’ robe and was healed.
“We wanted to get to the heart of the Gospel in the short amount of time that we had,” Jamie said. “… We picked these stories to go along with the cloths and to show that Jesus is the only one who can heal our spiritual needs.”
Out of the seven schools where trainings were held, two schools asked them to return each week to teach a Bible study for the girls.
“We come to the study to know more about the Bible,” Adut said. “It is a very good thing, and we tell others.”
To learn how you can help fund community development projects like this one, visit gobgr.org.
Jeffery Aaron, a writer for IMB’s Global Communication Team, has traveled to 17 African countries sharing the stories of God’s work on the continent.
Leave a Comment
Related Sites
Follow Us Online!
