In The Gambia, girls often use whatever they can get their hands on for sanitary hygiene, such as old cloths, cotton wool, leaves or rags.

So, seeing their plight and using a borrowed pattern from DayforGirls.org, we, Samaritana Gambia, set about making Recyclable Sanitary Kits.

Believe it or not, these kits can last 4 years if washed gently without bleach and harsh scrubbing. Our CEO Marian Faye still has the very same kits she made back in 2017 when she started working in our women's garden.

SamaritanaGambia.com (now a Gambian run Sexual Abuse Agency) focuses entirely on the Rescue, Rehabilitation and Prosecution (of the animals who rape preteens and young teens).

We do Relationship, Good Touch Bad Touch, and Sex Presentations in schools. It's there we explain about periods introduce & demonstrate the Sanitary Kits. You should hear the laughter when one of us tries to put on a pair of panties with the shield & pad in over the top of their jeans.

Our victims and survivors who have been raped, thanks to these kits, no longer suffer humiliating embarrassment on top of the community induced shame at being a rape victim.

Unfortunately, upriver where community education in body hygiene, let alone sexual reproduction matters, is almost entirely missing in all the small villages. Girls, therefore, sometimes get infections and die after being sent out into the bush during their monthly.

Making Recyclable Sanitary Kits serves the dual purpose of providing a necessary health product and an income for the girls who make them. In addition, working together on this project is an important form of our Rehabilitation Therapy here in The Gambia.

Our 1st 2 Interns made 100 kits a month, working only 50 hours in that first month & each got D5,000!

Because of the poverty in the community, very few locals can afford Kits which cost Dalasi D300 each (about 5 Pounds, or 6 USD or 5.5 Euros).

The foot pedal Singer model we had worked wonders, requires no electricity. This machine is very important in The Gambia where the Governments National power Nawec entirely corrupt of course, making "electricity" very unreliable, especially this last year.

So, what's inside the Kits? We are glad you asked 🙂  

One nice "kit" bag holds everything, which includes:

• One washcloth;
• One pair of new panties.
• One awesome smelling soap;
• One plastic sealable wash bag to carry the used pads;
• Four recyclable, washable, comfortable pads;
• One absorbent shield which holds the pads.

For more info write to us at info@samaritanagambia.com or phone +220 298 6979 or +220 750 6328 (both on WhatsApp too) or visit us in our Free Community Library in Bakau, on Atlantic Road, next to Solomeo's Restaurant.