Postcards

Pantometer

22-Jul-2022

When we started the Panties with Purpose campaign in 2011 to raise awareness about period poverty and help poor school girls in Kenya, we found ourselves with supporters from all over the world. This wonderful Pantometer was designed by a group of Girl Guides at a school in Vancouver, BC. They raised over a 1000 pairs of underpants and sent them across to us.

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Work in the rural areas of Kenya

22-Jul-2022

One of our partners in the early years of our work was The Path to Womanhood Foundation. They concentrated their work in Kiserian, where the Maasai live. On several occasions we donated underpants and sanitary pads, and PWF organised menstrual and reproductive health workshops for the women and young girls.

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The Great P n P Blast

22-Jul-2022

On Friday 30th September 2011, my sisters and I, together with the Kenyan artist and singer Iddi Achieng, organised a music concert, The Great Panties and Pads Blast,  at the Alliance Francaise Garden in Nairobi.

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Girls Soccer Clubs in Kibera

22-Jul-2022

Playing sports while having your period has always been a problem for girls. There is research and data from the Youth Sport Trust which shows over the last three years, periods have become the biggest concern for girls when doing PE in school. A total of 37% o girls interviewed said periods stopped them from getting active in school last year, up from 27% in 2018-19. 

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Menstrual and Reproductive Health Training

22-Jul-2022

Our outreach work in Kenya has included school, hospitals, prisons and orphanages. We have worked with a variety of community and faith based organisations and done distributions at mosques, temples, and churches.

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International Menstrual Hygiene Day 2018

22-Jul-2022

Every year on International Menstrual Hygiene Day, PwP supported a community based organisation with its efforts towards ending period poverty by providing them with underpants.

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Hot Mango Chutney Sauce

29-Jun-2022

I interviewed these four young women outside a shrine in the city centre of Multan. I explained I was researching a book on menstruation and wanted to ask them some questions. They were very friendly at first and suggested I take a photo of them. They said they were willing to share openly…

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Period Table

29-Jun-2022

Getting your period is, for many, filled with anxiety. Waiting for your period is also nerve wracking. And not getting it and finding out you’re pregnant can be either a terrifying or happy event. It all depends on your circumstances. I drew up this simple Period Table while thinking of the devastating consequences on so many women with the overturning of Roe vs Wade…

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Paper Boat

28-Jun-2022

In 2018 I came across To Die in Benares, a short story collection by K Madavane, translated from the French by Blake Smith and really loved his story Paper Boat.

I wrote him an email telling him why his story moved me so much, and we began a correspondence about writing…

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Opening up the conversation

28-Jun-2022

The way we tell and share our stories about menstruation, whether it be through fiction or essays, art or dance, are ways in which we open up the conversation. I first came across Shashi Deshpande’s novels in the eighties when I was living in Kenya. When I read about the protagonist Saru menstruating in The Dark Holds No Terrors, I was shocked…

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Street vendors in Karachi

28-Jun-2022

I interviewed these women sitting on the pavement selling dried fruits outside the main city market in Karachi. They laughed when I asked for their permission to speak to them about my book and the research I was doing, saying ‘foreigners’ are interested in the strangest of things…

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Pre-launch

28-Jun-2022

On the 22nd of May 2022, Period Matters was pre-launched as part of International Menstrual Hygiene Day celebrations, at LUMS, a university in Lahore. The cover was revealed with an explanation of its art work, made by Lyla FreeChild with her menstrual blood. Amna Mawaz Khan’s menstrual dance, commissioned for the book, was shown publicly for the first time…

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