CAGEAD celebrates World Menstruation Day 2021

THEME: INVESTMENT IN MENSTRUAL HEALTH AND TAKE ACTION NOW!!

In prelude to the celebrations marking the 7th edition of the World Menstruation Day 2021, CAGEAD staff participated in a Training of Trainers on Menstruation Hygiene Management organized by UN Women in Yaounde. During this 02 day training which ran from the 24th-26th of May 2021, we acquired more knowledge and information on Menstruation, the myths and taboos surrounding it, the different protection products and the types of appropriate infrastructure to properly manage menstruation. Sharing personal first experiences, it was noted that so many cultural taboos and myths surround and affect the way menstruation is perceived and thus leading to its poor management causing infections and infirmities on women and young girls. We have therefore coming back fortified with innovative tools and skills that we will use to carry out community sensitization especially to break the silence and debunk harmful taboos and myths that portray menstruation as dirty, impurity, illness and at times as a handicap.

On the other hand, menstruation should be a happy event, a thing of joy to be celebrated for without menstruation a girl cannot be a woman. Coming out of the training as trainers who will go to train others, we have been drilled on strategies the will be used to engage everyone beginning from the family (boys and father's) and the community (quarter groups and Councils, village development associations, churches, schools and all the leaders and community actors) to be aware and take part in promoting proper menstruation management. As a human rights issue, menstruation should be a subject of open discussion and should be everyone's concern.

Today the 28th of May which is the World Menstruation Day proper, CAGEAD is in the field to celebrate the day with the adolescent girls of Ntamafe and Ntenefor neighbouhoods in Bamenda 1 sub-division. Joint sensitization sessions were held in the communities bringing together adolescent girls, their brothers, mothers and fathers. Our discussions centred on the theme of the day calling on brothers, fathers and the community to invest in promoting proper menstrual hygiene for girls and women

Considering the fact that menstruation had been socially construed and regarded as something dirty, un pure, a handicap, an illness and a woman’s thing not to be spoken in the open, CAGEAD went to the field with the message that menstruation is a happy event, a source of joy for womanhood, something to be celebrated for without menstruation there will be no woman and humanity will cease to exist. At the end of the sessions, the parents acknowledged that they had been violating their women and girls by stigmatizing them and subjecting to violence the non- recognition of menstruation as a natural human right of a woman. The men promised to step up their investment in proving proper menstruation and protection products from their girls and women while the boys pledge to accompany and support their sisters and girls during their menstruation rather that stigmatizing them. CAGEAD presented the different protection product available that girls can use during menstruation. These product consisting of disposable sanitary pads, re-useable pads, washing soap, powder detergent and pants were distributed to the adolescent girls and boys.

Demonstration of the use of re-usable sanitary towels

Group pictures with Adolescents from the Bamendankwe