For Her Dignity

05/28/2024

Join us in creating a more in 2024. Imagine not having access to period products, not understanding your own body, and not knowing you deserve to feel fresh and clean. Together, we can change this narrative with your support.

Donate today to support Menstrual Hygiene Day 2024:

https://www.canadahelps.org/en/charities/forherdignity/campaign/menstrual-hygiene-day-canada-may-28-2024/

04/26/2024

We are so excited to share our SPRING IMPACT UPDATE with you!

Thanks to your support this winter, together, we supported 347 women to learn about their menstrual cycle and how to have dignity through their cycle by having fresh and clean menstrual supplies.

If you would like to sponsor future education sessions, please send us a direct message or email us at [email protected].

04/12/2024

I am about to head into a digital detox with my family for a few days, but want to let you know before I lose cellular reception on some of the project updates for our dignity programs in the Middle East. Some of you like more details ... others like just high level ... so pick the links below according your needs.

https://youtu.be/IcIw6jlwdaE (Spring 2024 update: 3.5 minute version)

https://youtu.be/emk9u20baPc (Spring 2024 update: 80 second version)

In short, it is most definitely not about me ... but about equipping local community voices to reach their own, and provide them with simple tools to do that.

I am honored and humbled to work shoulder to shoulder amongst the most amazing and resilient women ... what they face each day and overcome drives me to my knees as I ask God for strength to be shoulders they can stand on.

If you would like to contribute and support this effort, please private message me and I would be glad to help direct you on how you can add fuel to this grassroots fire of women dedicated to help impact their communities with dignity, hope & opportunity.

I will resurface in approximately a week.

03/13/2024

The “3 Init’s” were on the move again today! (In arabic ‘Inti’ is the female pronoun for “YOU”. It is our version of the 3 musketeers … all for one and one for all!

We are prepping for an action packed week of dignity sessions next week and had an advanced class with some of our facilitators in training.

It is one thing to cut out patterns …. But how to manage a session of 25 ladies tracing and cutting simultaneously … is quite another skill all together.

Feeling good about next week … love the progress of our apprentices.

Now the computer calls … need to finishing up some of the admin work that goes along with all of this fun action.

03/12/2024

Prep day for our next underwear making class … 60 plastic file folders = 2 complete hipster 9 sizes template trace sets …. Plus all of the left overs of the plastic = 76 oval templates for liners! Which are super useful in a class/workshop setting. NOTHING is wasted.

If you would like to learn how to make your own template set, join our community of Dignity Community of Practice

03/10/2024

So great to be with the Kendaka.eg lead textile queen Asmaa and team.

Today we did the A to Z on underwear Patterns and using super cute Upcycled fabrics!

Not a single moment was lost … Asmaa got right down to business and traced our patterns onto her own, cut her first practice pairs … and the rest is herstory.

Thank you Catherine El Taweel-Kost and your entire team at Kendaka … you are such a leader in sustainability fashion!

Can’t hardly wait to see all of the underwear and liners that will be made!

Thank you to بنك الكساء المصري Egyptian Clothing Bank for excess remnants that we used today.

03/08/2024

Happy International Women’s Day! .

So honored to be working alongside Journey of Life, بنك الكساء المصري Egyptian Clothing Bank Kendaka.eg Brighter Communities Worldwide The Confidence Queen Africa Oasis Saadia F.Hasson Transformation Textiles For Her Dignity

1 white Upcycled Hoodie = 16 L1’s & 16 L2’s = That would allow someone to have 8 “Fresh & Clean” liners any time she wanted. (L1 is an oval shaped liner; L2 is the larger shaped liner in the photo)

Alongside these hero’s I just mentioned, we are bringing women together to break taboos, smash shame over period poverty and provide EVERY WOMAN the education, inspiration and know how towards sustainable sanitary solutions.

This week the Egypt team doubled down on developing easy ways to replicate our patterns of underwear and liners with simple local sources of clear plastic file folders! Extremely cheap, assessable and durable to trace patterns and then use as templates on discarded fast fashion garments that will be Upcycled into unlimited numbers of washable absorbent liners and underwear.

02/17/2024

Kenyan update:

While I got to see my kids at their school in Rift Valley, the final bags of pre-cuts made their way to Londiani and Kitale.

There are many people to thank to make all of this possible. So I just really wanting to express my thanks for everyone who has prayed, sweated, lifted, labeled, counted, cut, who labored with all of their hearts even when no one was looking. Thank you.

Tomorrow, one last day to see my kids and then on Monday the next round of training 80+ leaders on how to transform these precuts into 1000’s of templates & patterns that can continue to inspire, equip and empower communities to reach communities.

So thankful that all the precuts are where they need to be … and so thankful I was here to see it being unloaded from the warehouse onto the many waiting smaller trucks to transport them to far off places. So thankful they have now made it to Far off places.

May this precious seed be like an underground aquifer that brings water to barren places.

I am praying that this seed effort of 2 factories in Egypt bear fruit in that the textile industry of Kenya and Uganda open up to supply additional and unending containers of precuts in the future.

Thank you to all who have contended for this to become reality.

02/16/2024

What you Learn today … teach the very next day!

There is so many things that I love about these pictures …

#1. I am not there and didn’t even take the photo. (I trained Patience, Her sister and a few others about making underwear … and then They went on to a far off community to lead their own underwear making sessions while I sorted the remaining container contents.

#2. You can’t see all 22 women and 6 men who were very enthused to learn from Patience and her team

#3. All they had were our training tapestries, some paper copies and their own t-shirts they upcycled, needles and thread.

#4. The men LOVED the idea of opening up the shirt sleeve to make even more!

#5. They loved the idea that you can literally clone any style and size of underwear

01/29/2024

Good Morning .., still no updates for kenya to share … but here is my attempt to take my 20 min detailed tutorial on how to make the TT Hipster protective underwear… down to 101 seconds and not use any words … so that you can share widely with those who don’t have huge data on their phones/access to internet or speak english. This link will also let them download any of the 9 sizes of patterns

Let me know what you think:

This is a simple pictorial tour of how to make protective underwear from a T-shirt.Patterns Courtesy of Transformation Textiles. Used with Permission....