Lunapads Blog

This post is about a few random things, but is mostly just a bit of background on the funniest video we’ve made so far.  It’s probably best to just go ahead and watch it first, then come back to read the rest of the post to learn how it all happened.

Was that funny or what?  My favorite part is the soundtrack in the elevator.  Seriously, go there - the food is really good, too!

Some background: when I first started dating my husband, he was living in LA, so I often flew down for little visits with him. We headed to the Encounter restaurant in LAX for dinner one time after he picked me up and loved it.  Subsequent trips to LA have not allowed for repeat visits, but it always provokes fond memories and a laugh when we happen to be there.  Suzanne and I were recently passing through LAX and I told her the story about it, not realizing that we would be stuck waiting for 5 hours there 2 days later.  When that happened, I insisted that we head over for lunch. To our delight we discovered that the Encounter was still going strong, lava lamps, kooky elevator soundtrack and all!

Inspired by a magnificent red lava lamp, we decided to make a video with a new product that we had just discovered: Wysi Wipes.  In case you don’t have the patience for the video, Wysi Wipes are handy-dandy little personal wipes that require only a bit of water to work their magic, and are biodegradable to boot.

As DivaCup users and Moms, we immediately appreciated their potential usefulness.  One of those situations where what looked bad a first actually turned into something pretty good.  Enjoy, and don’t forget that for April we are offering 2 free Wysi Wipes (packaged in a Pochette) with all orders over $50, plus Wysi Wipe 12 packs are intro-priced at $2.99!

Suzanne and I were in Anaheim CA a couple of weeks ago, where we attended the Natural Products Expo West trade show. It’s a busy place that can be a bit overwhelming, but there was no shortage of inspiration to be had.   One of the major highlights for us was running into Peggy O’Mara, founder of Mothering magazine. 

I hadn’t seen Peggy since I attended a workshop she was leading 3 years ago at Hollyhock.  It was a very special time for me, and I was joined there not only by my then-5 month old daughter Gigi, but also by my Mom Pat.  Peggy held the space for our stories, joys and fears, and it was a once in a lifetime opportunity to connect with one of the most influential figures in the natural parenting movement.

Peggy and Mothering have been huge sources of inspiration and information for Suzanne and I as Moms, and we are very excited that she will be here in Vancouver delivering the keynote address at the Healthy Families Conference, April 18 and 19 (co-sponsored by our friend Bridgitte from Natural Pod natural toys.)  We are trying to line up a visit with Peggy here at Lunapads as well, so stay tuned!

 Calling all Vancouver entrepreneurs!  CRAVE Shop Symposium is coming to Vancouver next week and it looks like it will have much to offer.  It’s a day-long event dedicated to inspiration and education, featuring local luminaries including our pal and Lunapads.com web diva Lauren Bacon of Raised Eyebrow Web Studio (and co-author with her business partner Emira Mears of the Boss of You), Laurel Douglas, CEO of the Women’s Enterprise Society of BC (I lead a peer mentoring group under their auspices), local social media maven Alexandra Samuel of Social Signal Marketing and DIY social media and SEO educator Steve Jagger of Reachd.com (Steve was here at Lunapads for some in-house training a few weeks ago and he and biz partner Rodney Bartlett were extremely helpful.)Here are the deets:

When: Monday March 30, 2009

Time: 8am-5:30pm

Where: Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street, Vancouver BC

Tickets: $85 USD per guest $70 USD each for two or more

To register, click here.  See you there!

This article originally appeared in The Huffington Post.
Written by Elizabeth Scharpf and Rachel Kauder Nalebuff.
Photo by Pierre Holtz | UNICEF.

Thatcher Mweu is a high school sophomore at Choate Rosemary Hall, a prestigious New England boarding school. Two years ago, she was living in a rural Kenyan village. Introducing the new class of 2011, Choate’s headmaster told the school of its deepening diversity - there was a girl who had never been in an elevator before. What he didn’t know is that Thatcher had never seen a tampon before, either.

Despite the fact that half the world menstruates, most people overlook the serious repercussions of a lack of affordable sanitary supplies in developing countries. The reason? Most people don’t know that it is a problem. Others find the subject embarrassing. Even those who do understand think there are more pressing problems at hand. Why spend money on pads when AIDS remains to be solved, when countries desperately need infrastructure, when the economy is collapsing? Because it turns out that providing pads does much more than prevent embarrassing stains. It is a simple solution that can change the standing of a gender, and thus an economy, across a continent.

In the US, sanitary pads first became widespread in 1921, tampons in 1936. As a result girls and women had the opportunity to fully participate in school, sports, and the workforce. These products equaled freedom. And this is why many women say tampons are one of the greatest inventions of all time. They effectively reduced the inconvenience, opportunity cost, and stigma of menstruation.

But in developing countries, periods continue to be a serious handicap. According to UNICEF, ten percent of school-age African girls miss school because of a lack of access to affordable sanitary products. In Rwanda, it’s much worse. According to on-the-ground research by Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), half the girls are missing school due to menstruation and the main reason given is that sanitary pads are too expensive. For women, 24% miss work - up to 45 days per year - for the same reason. This not only limits girls’ educational and women’s professional achievement, but leads to a significant economic loss for nations. SHE estimates that a lack of affordable sanitary pads reduces GDP by $115 million per year in Rwanda alone.

There are also serious health repercussions of not having pads. In Asia, many women still use rags; less fortunate ones use newspapers, banana leaves, even sand or ash. While rags were common before the pad was invented, the problem in developing countries is that often women don’t have access to clean water to wash them. And the taboo of menstruation means that many women cannot hang their rags to dry in the open. So, instead, they hide them in dark, damp places where no one will find them. As one might imagine, infections are rampant.

The first step is to destigmatize menstruation. Bringing periods into the open won’t be easy. The taboo of menstruation is embedded in our religions, culture, and history. The Quran declares that menstruating women “are a hurt and a pollution.” Indian women are exiled from their own homes. Orthodox Jewish women are forbidden to have sex.
French housewives can’t make mayonnaise. In ancient Rome, Pliny the Elder wrote that contact with menstrual blood “turns new wine sour, crops touched by it become barren, grafts die, …, the edge of steel and the gleam of ivory are dulled.” Today, Pliny seems ridiculous, but discrimination and ignorance remain.

To change attitudes means breaking the silence. Our hope is that this article will help start a dialogue with the women and men around you. Almost every woman remembers her first period - where and when it happened, who, if anyone, she told, and even what she was wearing. Girls should know the stories of the women in their family. Sharing these stories will help mothers and daughters (and dads, too) talk more openly about this natural process.

Equally important is to change the economy of menstruation. Sanitary pads should be affordable and safe. This is an investment not only in women, but economies.

Thirty years ago, Gloria Steinem published one of her most famous essays, If Men Could Menstruate. There would be no taboos. Men would brag about how long and how much. And sanitary supplies would be federally funded and free. It’s time we do a better job helping our sisters around the world. P&G is contributing $5 million over five years to provide sanity supplies in Africa. SHE is jump-starting local businesses to produce affordable sanitary supplies around the globe. (And Lunapads has Pads4Girls - a way to donate reusable cloth pads to girls & women in need.)

Individually, we can all help end the taboo by talking. These are the ways to truly celebrate International Women’s Day.

Our good friend (and official Lunapads portrait photographer) Jaime Kowal is launching a photography workshop for women.  Jaime has photographed the Lunagals several times and her fine work is sprinkled throughout the Lunapads website and in our catalogue and leaflets.  Jaime has an amazing personality and her aura shines through as soon as you meet her.   Jaime is committed to social, environmental, health and women’s issues and her upcoming workshop sounds like a perfect union of photographic art and the divine feminine.

A Photography, Storytelling and Self-Publishing Workshop for Women

What is sacred to you? How does the energy of the divine feminine play out in your life? What are you grateful for? Explore these and other important questions in a safe circle of women, and then transform your observations and feelings into form through photography and self-publishing.  Over the course of four sessions you will learn basic photography, editing and creative storytelling skills. You will learn how to use self-publishing technology to print a visual diary of the things that are most important to you. Come together with other women to celebrate your journey through creative exploration and honouring!

When and where: March 17 - April 14, 2009 in Vancouver (Mount Pleasant) BC

Week 1: Tuesday March 17, 6-9pm
Week 2: Tuesday March 24, 6-9pm
Week 3: Tuesday March 31, 6-9pm
Week 4: Tuesday April 14, 6-9pm*

Cost: $325 plus GST. Does not include cost of your book, which will cost approximately $50.  To register, please call Jaime at 604-879-0728 or email info@jaimekowal.com

A few months ago, Madeleine wrote a post about whether Lunapads is a big or small business.  There are certainly times when we feel pretty small in the grand scheme of things (“hello P&G, are we on your radar?”)  That said, we like to think big and more importantly, try to hold ourselves to a higher standard like the big companies do (or should do!)  When you are a small business, you can often fly under the radar for a lot of things.  As mentioned before, most home based cloth pad businesses get by without jumping through the regulatory hoops and expense of dealing with the FDA.  Most also don’t carry expensive product liability insurance.  But, we are serious about what we do and have our customers health and safety in mind. 

So, when we found out that there was a safety risk related to our beloved Herbal Heat Pack, we acted as quickly and responsibly as we could.  Turns out, that with the variability in strength of microwave ovens, the heat pack can ignite and be a fire hazzard.  This was scary news to us, so we immediately contacted our insurance representatives, worked with our underwriters, our lawyers, and the federal health authorities to get the proper advice on what to do.  After wading through piles of paperwork, numerous phone calls and explanatory emails, we finally launched a full product recall of the heat packs by contacting all of our customers by email last Friday, instructing them to immediately dispose of the heat pack and offered a full refund (as well as a discount on future orders.)

We hoped that our customers wouldn’t be too upset and frustrated with this news and at worst, lose faith in us as a business.  Well, much to our delight, almost everyone who responded to our letter was extremely positive, with praise for our efforts and pledges of allegience to Lunapads. We feel this experience is a good lesson for businesses, big or small: doing the right thing, with integrity, and with the customer in mind is always the right choice and ultimately builds goodwill in the long run.  We are truly grateful to have such loyal customers and to be able to continue to love the work we do.

Meet Emily Wilson. She works in Zimbabwe with women’s organizations and through this work she has discovered a real need to help women and girls gain access to menstrual supplies. In Emily’s words:

“At one meeting, a member of the Women’s Coalition of Zimbabwe stated that there is a real need to engender humanitarian responses in the country; the example she gave is the fact that many women can no longer afford to buy sanitary wear, or else it is just not available in stores. This message was repeated over and over during my visits to different organizations and communities, and so knowing that I was to return to Zimbabwe again in early January, I decided to try and do something about this issue. I mobilized friends, family members and complete strangers in Ottawa to collect 35 boxes of tampons, 65 packages of maxi pads, and 5 packages of reusable pads. The collection drive was fascinating, as it started up numerous debates and discussions about the most appropriate sanitary wear for women in Zimbabwe (tampons versus pads), issues of health and sustainability (disposable versus reusable), etc. In the end, of course, I took what had been donated, and felt very grateful for all of the support received.

I took a giant suitcase of these items with me to Zimbabwe in January, and personally delivered them to a women’s shelter in the city of Bulawayo. I met with some of the young women there as well as members of the Board and people from the local Church who volunteer to help run the shelter. They were all extremely grateful and were very touched by the gesture. After discussing with them what the most appropriate items are for young women in Zimbabwe, it became clear that reusable pads are the best - in terms of being culturally appropriate, practical, and sustainable.”

This is where Lunapads comes in. Emily contacted us to help her collect enough pads to fill another suitcase (or two, or three!) with reusable cloth pads. She wants to give the women a lasting alternative and something beautiful and functional. So please, read about the groups Emily is working with in Zimbabwe and don’t hesitate to help a woman there today!

Choose: Sexual Rights Centre (Zimbabwe) from the donation options. You can donate a Pads4Girls Kit which gives a full set of pads needed for one woman/girl or you can donate any amount of money, which will go towards the purchase of more kits.

The Sexual Rights Centre is the ‘umbrella’ organization that will oversee delivery of the pads to The Haven, Contact Family Counselling and Ingutsheni Psychiatric Hospital. For the safety of the women they help we cannot provide much information about these organizations, but below are a few details.

The Haven is a shelter for abused women and their children, located in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. The shelter was established by concerned citizens and professionals from the legal, medical, psychological and education sectors. This committee of professionals started providing shelter for abused women and their children in 1999; a home was purchased as a permanent shelter in 2006. The Haven Trust and its networks provide education on women’s rights, HIV & AIDS, sexual & reproductive health, and livelihood skills. Members from the Bulawayo community provide food and in-kind support for the shelter, which is how it currently continues to operate.

Contact Family Counselling, also based in Bulawayo, offers free counselling services for families and children in difficult circumstances. The organization focuses on disadvantaged people to empower them to lead healthier and more productive lives. Contact also trains a broad range of health, social service and community workers in systemic counselling techniques. Contact initiated a Child Sexual Abuse Program in 2007, offering services to children and their families affected by sexual abuse. For more information: www.contactfc.org

Ingutsheni Psychiatric Hospital is one of the largest psychiatric facilities in Southern Africa. The hospital provides residential care and outreach support for people living with mental health problems. The hospital currently houses over 300 female patients. The hospital has experienced serious challenges in delivering effective medical resources and information for female patients. The Sexual Rights Centre currently works with the female patients at Ingutsheni and are appealing for sanitary products for the women. Access to sanitary products is a huge problem for Zimbabwean women and particularly women living in institutions.