Best friends Susan Rowe and Sally Olsen discovered the international organization Days for Girls while looking for a new sewing project.
Days for Girls is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering women through providing sustainable feminine-hygiene products and health education. Since 2008, Days for Girls has reached more than 640,000 women in over 100 countries.
“I heard about the group from my sister in Maryland. She knew I was looking for a meaningful sewing project,” Rowe said. “I looked it up and thought it sounded really interesting. Sally and I always wanted to have a project to do together.”
Without a solution to manage their monthly cycle, one in 10 girls in Sub-Saharan Africa, 113 million adolescent girls in India and 30 percent of girls from rural Brazil will miss school.
Rowe said that she and Olsen started by sewing together once or twice a week, learning the specifics for creating the hygiene kits.
“For three or four months, our goal was to make 10 kits on our own,” Rowe said.
Each feminine-hygiene kit comes with a drawstring bag, two moisture barrier liners, eight absorbent tri-fold pads, an instruction sheet, two one-gallon Ziploc bags, a washcloth, soap and two pairs of underwear.
Days for Girls is particular about the quality, color and type of fabric used for the hygiene kits.
For example, fabric should be 100 percent cotton with brightly colored prints to disguise stains. Prints should be floral or geometric shapes.
Olsen said each kit takes about three to four hours to complete, and they should last up to three years with proper care.
Rowe, a retired upholsterer, has a sewing space above her garage. They constructed the first 10 kits on their own, and mailed them to the Days for Girls headquarters for distribution.
In September 2016, Rowe and Olsen officially started the Durango chapter of Days for Girls.
The group meets once a month to sew together at space provided by the Durango Quilt Co., Rowe said.
“We have about eight to 10 core members and 26 people on our mailing list,” Olsen said. “Not everyone sews, but there is always something to do for everyone interested. We have to pin things, put on snaps and cut fabric.”
The group received a call last January from Marty Sheppard, founder of the Sheppard Foundation for Hope, requesting 400 kits, needed by the end of March for an empowerment retreat for Maasai girls in Kenya, Africa.
The Sheppard Foundation for Hope is a faith-based Christian nonprofit organization with the purpose of empowering vulnerable people (widows, orphans and the poor) with hope and the tools to rise above their distress.
“Most of the girls, if they do get a chance to go to school, have to miss class one week a month because they have no money to purchase menstrual pads,” Sheppard said. “If they have reusable kits, this allows them to go to school the full time and not miss out on education.”
Rowe said they found interested women to help them construct the kits, which they had about two months to make.
“There were probably 12 to 14 of us who worked on those 400 kits,” Rowe said. “A group of us put the finished kits together at the Methodist Church before they were sent to Kenya.”
Sheppard said the Kenyan girls were elated to receive the hygiene kits.
“When those girls got those kits, it was like a huge applause. They were so thankful,” she said. “I just hope that this community supports Durango Days for Girls because they help vulnerable women around the world.”
The Durango Days for Girls team relies on donations and volunteers because all of the fabric and other sewable items are purchased out of pocket by the group.
Currently, the group is working on producing 75 kits that First United Methodist Church in Durango will take to Kenya in December.
“Several people have donated materials, and we just received a nice money donation from an individual that will last us a while,” Rowe said. “We are always looking for more volunteers to sew, and monetary and material donations. These kits are so important because women deserve to have a sense of dignity.”
mrupani@durangoherald.com
If You Go
Interested volunteers are encouraged to attend the next public sew day from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Aug. 22 at Durango Quilt Co., 21516 U.S. Highway 160.
