Lunapads Blog

I am brimming with joy on the recent updates on several Goods4Girls projects afoot in the world.  The next installment comes from Anna and her project called “Cycle of Hope“.  While planning her trip to Kenya to do some volunteer work with HIV/Aids positive women, Anna heard about Lunapads and Goods4Girls and wanted to make this a part of her project.  Resourceful and determined, Anna contacted Lunapads, Goods4Girls, joined a local women’s group in Conneticut, and raised enough money to send 40 Goods4Girls Kits to Kenya.  Shipping products to Africa is not always easy, as we’ve learned from our experience sending Lunapads to Zimbabwe.  Not expecting a confrontation from Kenyan customs officials at the airport to pick up the Lunapads, Anna found the courage to stand up against them.  Here is her report in an email I received in mid November:

I fought Kenyan customs, and I won. At one point yesterday they were demanding over $300 from me in additional taxes and fees. I stood firm: these are donations for a charity. You can’t tax me. This is so not like me! I continue to discover power in myself I never knew I had… and this morning I brought my box of Lunapads home from the airport without paying a penny. Woo hoo!

You can read more about Anna’s trip on her blog here.  It is a wonderful story to follow.  Anna set off to Kenya to help empower other women and in the process, has come back to the United States a more empowered woman herself.  Home briefly for Christmas, Anna is heading back to Kenya in January to start an NGO to help establish sustainable incomes for the “positive” women of Kitengela.   On her follow up trip, she’ll distribute the Lunapads Goods4Girls kits to a small Kenyan-run NGO working with underprivileged teen girls in Kibera.  We look forward to your update in the new year Anna!

 

We love Facebook for a ton of reasons: connecting with customers and friends chief among them.  That said, it’s long been a bone of contention for us as well as the thousands of breastfeeding moms and their supporters that photos of nursing moms and their babies are removed by Facebook, particularly since there is no shortage of busty gals being featured in the advertising.  Suzanne is already an accomplished lactivist: check out her post about a nurse-in that she attended earlier this year.

There are some groups that you can join to protest this sad reality - “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” being the most popular.  Today, December 27th, has been designated by Facebook lactivists as Mothers International Lactation Campaign.  Any Facebook users who also support breastfeeding can either post their own photos or choose from thousands that have been posted in these groups, as well as “donate” their status update spaces to read “Hey, Facebook, breastfeeding is not obscene!” for the day.  Please join us in this virtual protest!

Here is a great list of resources for those who would like to learn more about the importance of breastfeeding.  On a personal note, I could never have succeeded in nursing my daughter (let’s just say that it can be harder than it looks!) without the support of everyone from La Leche League volunteers to my husband, midwife, doula and business partner.  The long-term value of this early attachment, not to mention the nutrition, is priceless.  We need to do everything we can to support it, including normalizing images of breasts doing what they’re designed for.�

Back from Africa, Carrie-Jane Williams is now home and has updated her blog with some wonderful pictures from her trip to Uganda.  As posted in the Lunapads blog in June 2008, Carrie-Jane was off to Uganda for a volunteer teaching placement and research.  As a side project, she became inspired to do some fundraising to bring Lunapads Goods4Girls Kits  for school girls.  Pictured here is a local nurse talking to the girls about menstruation.

Here is the rest of Carrie-Jane’s report:“Thanks to your donations, about 50 U-Go Girl Kits were taken to girls in Uganda. They were a huge hit with the high school girls! I also brought some to a clinic at a resource centre in a village called Tekera. Because there weren’t enough kits to distribute to everybody (and there’s a huge demand!) I asked the craftswomen and tailors at the resource centre if they could make the pads themselves. We found some old scraps of material and, sure enough, 15 minutes later, a pad was made. The women will start producing pads for local school girls and women and will hopefully make a little money. Overall, the Luna experience was very empowering! U-go Girls!”

Her story in pictures from her blog are a must see.  I particularly enjoyed the pictures of the making of Lunapads (dubbed “Afripads”) by the locals and seeing the old fashioned sewing machines just like my grandmother’s.

All of us at Lunapads couldn’t be happier to see images of the beginings of a long term sustainable solution for the girls.  Thanks again Carrie-Jane for your amazing work and bringing Lunapads to Uganda.

Growing up in Victoria and now living in Vancouver, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve experienced a white Christmas (with the last time being in 1998!) While many of you may think of Canada as the land of snow and ice, most Canadians live along the 49th parallel and share the same weather as cities like Seattle, Detroit and New York. And for those of us living along the fair-weathered ‘wet coast’, 90% of the time we are simply “dreaming of a white Christmas”. Well, this year we’ll be singing along with good old Bing Crosby.

Mother Nature and Jack Frost have teamed up to deliver a few good blasts of snow that will last to Christmas day and beyond.  Because it snows so infrequently over here, much of the city shuts down during snowfalls like this, making it a good time to just stay home with the family. Over the weekend we put up the Christmas tree, baked cookies for Santa and decorated a gingerbread house.

Much fun was had at the local park tobogganing, visiting Vancouver’s largest gingerbread house exhibit and riding the sky train across town. Aiden and I also went on a lantern walk in the deep snow on the evening of winter solstice.  Our loose plans for the remainder of the holiday break include attending a Pantomime and venturing to our local mountain to enjoy the Peak of Christmas (pictured at top). What holiday traditions do you enjoy each year? Any readers experiencing summer right now?

So, I was just given the gift of being carbon neutral for one day. I mean, I did ride my bike today but I’m still contributing carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere - by working at a computer, by consuming goods that went through a manufacturing process, by living in an apartment that is not heated by methane gas from a compost pile! We are all guilty of contributing carbon to the earth.

Brighter Planet has come up with a helpful solution. With their One Day Campaign you can give the gift of carbon neutrality to 5 loved ones and as a bonus they’ll make you carbon neutral as well…and it’s free. Yep, free. All they ask in return is that you consider conserving during the holidays.

So while buying carbon offsets isn’t the final solution to our environmental problems, it is a big help towards financing renewable energy projects that will make a difference for our future.

And if we each take the initiative to ‘green’ our lives and conserve when we can we will continue to help the planet we all know and love~

My name is Lily, I’m eighteen years old and living in Chicago. Though I’ve had my period for five years now, I didn’t even give alternative menstrual products a thought until a few weeks ago.
I suffer from very heavy periods and was googling ways to make them more comfortable, and up comes Lunapads!
Well, after going on the site, as you’d assume, I was very grossed out at first! After all, why would anybody want to revert back to using rags, which are dirty, smelly, unsanitary……..
But then I read the testimonies of other woman who were using Lunapads and all of them had a positive experience from switching to natural menstrual products. Since the Diva Cup/internal products are not an option for me (because of a microperforate hymen) I decided that cloth pads would be the best route. After all, what did I have to lose?

I discussed it with my fiance, thinking he was going to freak out and be disgusted with the idea. To my surprise, he thought it a great idea, and bought me my first Lunapad. I love it! The pattern is adorable and so much more happy-looking and softer than the disposable maxis I’m used to. Because of my tight budget and enthusiasm for the cloth pads, I started to make my own using instructions for hand-sewing online.  My fiance helped out by getting me fabrics and teaching me to sew. Now I have a beautiful collection of cloth pads all based off of my Lunapad.
This week, I got the chance to try them out! I can honestly say this is the first time Ive been comfortable with my period. Cloth pads absorb wonderfully and don’t smell like disposables. Not only that, but you can forget worrying about running out to buy disposables, hurting the environment with the garbage you generate, and leaving the used pads in a washroom stall trash receptacle for someone else to clean up.
I soaked the pads for several hours, used the water for my plants, threw them in the wash, and used peroxide to get out any remaining stains. Piece of cake.

The best part though, is that my periods have gotten lighter! Okay, maybe it’s my imagination, or maybe I’m just fortunate this month, but I like to think of it as an added bonus of cloth pads… maybe the chemicals in disposables contribute to painful, long periods?
Anyways, I just wanted to say THANK YOU to the Lunagals. And for those of you who are considering making the switch, DO IT! It’s totally worth it. Cloth pads are so much better than disposables, and if you’re lucky enough to be able to use a Diva Cup, I’ve heard great things about them as well.
I feel very comfortable with my “moontime” now and am making it a positive experience, instead of a shameful one, all thanks to Lunapads!

Yes siree, we have been the ‘it’ company for reviews lately.  Another one was just posted by Charlotte of A Mom Who Loves Reviews. Check it out to get a special discount code or for the chance to win some free Lunapads!

As we’ll see later in this post I have basically let myself off the hook entirely with respect to holiday shopping, but in the meantime I have a few ideas to share about what I’d be doing if I was a little more organized this year…

I absolutely love the monthly Portobello West market in Vancouver (the next one is this weekend, December 13th and 14th), that features super-funky, crafty, cutting-edge art, jewelry, clothing and more, all designed and made by local artisans and producers.  Kids love it, and there are also yummy crepes on Sunday.  You will definitely have a great time, and even if you don’t find exactly what Uncle Bob would like, will probably treat yourself to something groovy.

I know that I keep talking about Ricki Lake, but what can I say?  She is so yummy, and so is her new line of slings (pictured at left).  Designed in conjunction with MobyWrap, you can order yours here.

Vancouverites who want the same look can opt for locally-made Baby Buddha slings (pictured at right), now available in organic bamboo and organic hemp!

For you lovers of menstrual lore out there, Spanish artist Danae has just released her newest “Viva la menstruacion!” collection of 2009 menstrual calendars, stickers, posters and more.

Our pal Chloe Jo over at Girlie Girl Army now has her newsletter discount deals on her site (including a promo code for Lunapads), featuring fabulous eco-chic everything.

So what am I giving my friends and family this year?  Beeswax candles and homemade biscotti (I use Mark Bittman’s recipe, and throw in dried cranberries and white chocolate chips, taking his suggestion of using more butter for a less brittle result!)

This is way overdue considering how many of them there are, but better late than never! We have just received our annual holiday shipment of water bottles and other goodies from one of our most admired colleagues: Reusablebags.com.

Not only do these folks have a fantastic mission and products, but their site is a simply skookum example of e-commerce technology and marketing at its finest. My adored insulated lunch tote is pictured above as one example of their incredible collection of all manner of reusable alternatives for lunch packing, shopping, eating, drinking and generally reducing consumption of everyday disposable junk in style.

We think that Lunapads and the DivaCup would be a great fit for their collection, so if you feel like giving us a little Christmas present, please drop them a line and tell them that you agree!

While I’m on this theme, I’d also like to do a shoutout for the Moukisac, a Vancouver-made reusable shopping system that takes an extra step beyond just a cloth grocery bag to include fine mesh bags for produce or bulk items.

Lunapads reusable mesh bags make great produce bags too ~ and they’re 10% off this month!

December 6th is a painful day for any Canadian old enough to remember the horrific events that took place 19 years ago on this date. The murder of 14 women at Montreal’s Ecole Polytechnique (an additional 14 men and women were also shot, but survived) by a lone gunman shocked and devastated the nation, and engendered a disturbing debate about the state of violence against women overall.

Whether one looks back on the incident as the work of a random lunatic or as an extreme point on a continuum of violence against women that continues to permeate our culture, to me the point is to honor the memory of these innocent young women whose lives were so tragically cut short. Please take a moment to read their names, and consider that we have not only lost them as sisters, daughters, friends, and partners, but in the case of the 12 who were engineering students, as women who bravely sought to create their careers in a traditionally male-dominated profession.

There will be a vigil tomorrow in Vancouver, as well as numerous sister events across the country. December 6th is now Canada’s National Day for Remembrance and Action Against Violence Against Women.