The “Dona do meu fluxo” (or “Owner of my flow”) project will tour the countryside of Minas Gerais to bring information through workshops, and distribute menstrual cups to vulnerable women. The Project has been designed by the female teams of Korui, who produce sanitary pads and menstrual products, and of Raízes Sustainable Development, which has more than 10 years of experience dealing with communities in need, and has as its main goal the empowerment of women in these rural poor areas.
That is how Korui’s invitation popped up to concretize this partnership and those two companies led by women started to design this program. They thought that just the simple distribution of menstrual cups only would be far too simplistic, given that they can be complex objects to adapt to. Besides, they could even be rejected by women if they don’t understand how to use them and their main benefits. So, why not immersively explain all of this?
The solution they found was to provide workshops that would :
- Explain the pragmatic use of the menstrual cup;
- Break the taboo on menstrual cycles;
- Reduce the distance between those women and their own bodies (some of them did not get to attend school and never had basic female anatomy lessons);
- Show the benefits of using a menstrual cup in the long term – for the body, the wallet, and the environment.
The idea is to encompass all of the above, in a very pragmatic, openly-shared way, also through the use of images, stories, data, etc.
“One of the biggest advantages is that a cup lasts around 10 years. And for these communities, the price of sanitary pads is most of the time quite significant. So, if you can save 10 years of buying sanitary pads; wonderful! Besides being more hygienic, it entails a whole different understanding that the woman has of her own body, and it is more sustainable too. You don’t generate this huge amount of waste that normal pads do,” explains one of the project founders and Raízes partner-director, Ms. Mariana Madureira.
Benefited women
The initiative only got out of the realm of ideas quite recently, but its first seed was planted long ago. In 2016, when Korui was created, they launched a campaign in which they vowed that – for every 10 menstrual cups sold, one would be donated to a socially vulnerable woman. It is now time to deliver on their promise and put it into practice!
The selection of the women who would benefit was assisted by Raízes, as the company also originates from Minas Gerais state in Brazil, and has already operated in the countryside of this state and region for a long time, knowing its social needs well. The first workshop has already been confirmed. It will happen during the Festival dos Povos, in the Chapada Gaúcha, located in the North of Minas Gerais, and will utilize the Institute Rosa e Sertão as the local partner for mobilization. From there onwards, the workshop will visit several communities, like Uruana, Sagarana, Campo Buriti, Coqueiro Campo, and a lot more.
The idea is to bring up stories showing archetypes of women in society nowadays, in order to stimulate them to observe themselves, look at their bodies, and analyze their needs. We are creating very thoughtful, pleasant, sensitive kinds of material and activities to share with them.
