Lunapads Blog

Before we ring in some news about what’s new for 2010, we wanted to reflect upon 2009, and how it brought Lunapads some great new people, products and inspiration.  Here are a some of the highlights:

Pads4Girls expands:  During 2009, we expanded our Pads4Girls program by eagerly partnering with new groups that reached out to communities in Cuba, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia.  Thanks to customer support and the work of courageous individuals and NGOs, hundreds of girls and women are now able to stay at work or school while menstruating, and deal with their periods safely and with minimal environmental impact.

Recognizing there are practical solutions closer to home, we created our  “Make your own cloth menstrual pads” video series that has been viewed by thousands. These videos are regularly used by women in Africa (and here in North America) to make their own cloth pads. And in December 2009, Lunapads partnered with Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) by donating 20% of holiday sales for 2 of our top-selling gift items to their program, which makes biodegradable disposable pads from agricultural waste in Rwanda.

Fabulous folks and adventures abroad: One of the perks of our work is choosing to take some strategic business trips and while doing so, connecting with some truly amazing people.  During 2009, we had the good fortune to meet some real treasures and leaders in our community: In March 2009, we attended the always mindboggling Expo West Natural Products Trade Show in Anaheim CA and reconnected with our friends Francine and Carinne Chamers, founders of the DivaCup and also met Sarah Kraft, founder of the online Mindful Mama community.

While walking the trade show, we spotted Mothering Magazine Founder, Editor and Publisher Peggy O’Mara and couldn’t miss the opportunity to stop and tell her how much we adored her.  This conversation led to the plans for a personal visit from Peggy right here at Lunapads the following month.  Leveraging off of Peggy’s rock star status as a natural parenting pioneer and leader, we brought together a group of friends and colleagues to hear Peggy speak at a warm and inspiring tea party benefiting Pads4Girls.

In September 2009, I took a first-time trip to the ABC kids expo in Las Vegas, where I also had an insightful visit to Zappos.com’s headquarters.  Meanwhile Suzanne had yet another transcendent experience at the Social Venture Institute (SVI) at Hollyhock, BC.  In November 2009, we both attended the Green America Business Conference and Green Festival in San Francisco.  While we were there, we had the great fortune to meet up with  SHE founder Elizabeth Scharpf and one of our business heroes, Reusablebags.com founder Vincent Cobb.

New products and fabrics: We expanded the Lunapads collection with several new products and fabrics: the P-style, Wysi-wipes, Cloth Wipes (which elicited one of our most discussed blog posts of the year) and our first-ever custom 100% organic cotton print, Magenta Mandala.

Lunapanties, our very own period underwear, made a long awaited comeback in November 2009, with the introduction of our new Hipster style and magenta colored organic cotton.

Staff changes: We bid a tearful and fond farewell to Sandra, one of our longest-term employees, as she moved on to continue her work as a bicycle safety educator. While it is hard to replicate Sandra’s incredible personal flair for customer service, Sara, the newest addition to the Lunapads team, is doing a fantastic job!

Media and accolades: In the summer of 2009, we learned that Lunapads and the DivaCup were featured in an entertaining and informative book by Canadian journalist Vanessa Farquharson called “Sleeping Naked is Green“.  At the end of 2009 Lunapads was profiled in our of our local papers, featuring a funny photo of Suzanne and I having a “tug-of-war” with a clothesline of Lunapads and Lunapanties.

By far the biggest highlight of the year was being voted into the top 10 of Green America’s People Choice Awards and so you can imagine our reaction when we found out that we had placed in the top 3 and received the newly-minted Shining Light award.

While Suzanne and I celebrated our award San Francisco, we never lost sight of the unsung heroes in the exercise: staffers Lisa and Morgan (whose idea it was in the first place), Facebook and Twitter (follow us! @Lunapads, @Luna_Diva (me) and @Luna_gal (Suzanne)) for providing the forums to drum up votes, and last but far from least, YOU, our awesome customers, for taking the time to cast your votes - it couldn’t have happened with you.

On that note, we’d like to take this opportunity to thank you all for a great 2009, and wish you all the best for 2010 from the Lunagals!

As many of you are already aware, Lunapads offers cost-priced Pads4Girls Kits that can be purchased by customers, which are then given to girls and birthing women in Africa.  The way it works is that we are approached by individuals or NGOs who work with girls and women in need (Imagine1Day Ethiopia and Shanti Uganda are two Vancouver-based examples) who we then add to the list of potential recipients for customer donations. Customers buy the kits, and we give them to the groups who then distribute them to the recipients - all good.

That said, like so many other things in life, Pads4Girls isn’t perfect.  First, the obvious problem that we can’t reach everyone who needs supplies.  Second, there are not always the necessary supporting resources available (education, water and stable living situations come to mind) in every community that make using cloth pads easy.  Finally, while Pads4Girls kits help thousands of girls and women, they are still being shipped half way around the world.  We are thrilled to tell you about a new initiative that takes this work several steps further, as well as how a little holiday gift-giving can help to support it.

Elizabeth Scharpf is as striking in person as her accomplishments and vision are on paper.  Tall, grounded, deeply compassionate and extremely smart were both my first and lasting impressions of her.  Elizabeth is the founder of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), a unique social profit that seeks to empower women and girls both physically and financially.

While working on economic policy (think World Bank and Clinton Foundation level) Elizabeth came to understand the impact that girls missing school and women missing work due to unmanaged menses was having.  She then asked herself what was going to make a bigger difference: the report that she was writing “that nobody was going to read anyway” (her words), or finding a way to help girls stay in school and women get back to work? Thus SHE was born.

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As some of you may know, in my prior life before Lunapads, I worked in the field of Finance and Accounting, and got a small taste of what shareholder value and corporate profits meant in the mainstream world of finance.  It was my dissatisfaction with the type of work I was doing that prompted me to leave for ‘greener’ pastures, which, coincidentally, coincided with meeting Madeleine!

Over a decade ago, there was a small collection of organizations who promoted the idea of ethical investing and created ethical funds which consisted of companies that had been screened for their ethical business practices.  What emerged was a niche Ethical/Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) category in the financial sector.  However, many of these funds did not attract the interest of mainstream investors because they didn’t perform adequately (because it’s all about maximizing financial returns in their world).

Fortunately, there seems to be a change in the tide of what investors are looking for, which isn’t all that surprising given the financial meltdown in the past year. (How many millions of people have been affected by the financial market collapse and wondered, where, besides our mattresses, should we be putting some of our hard earned dollars?) During these tumultuous times,  it appears that more and more investors are looking for investments that will not only provide a fair return, but do the right thing for people and the planet. (more…)

Frédérique and her very first handmade pad!

My name is Frédérique. I am a licensed practical nurse (LPN) and am currently going to college to become a registered nurse. I have created a project called Pads for Power. My project includes collecting disposable feminine hygiene products and donating them to homeless shelters in Vancouver. It also includes making homemade reusable pads to be sent to developing countries where many women and girls living in rural settings do not have access to feminine hygiene products. Consequently, they must stay at home and miss up to a week of work or school every single month. These contributions mean that these girls and women, both near and far, will have the freedom to go to school or work every day and, in turn, the power to achieve greater success in life.

This is the story of how this project came about:

I was given an immense amount of pads and tampons from a post-menopausal friend a few months back. I wondered what to do with all of them since I already had my own little supply and didn’t feel the need to be “ready” years in advance. I had the idea of giving them to a friend from school who would be traveling to Tanzania, Africa. She was going to help with the creation of medical and education systems in rural areas. I knew there was a great need for feminine hygiene products in these areas. Unfortunately, she had no extra space for all my pads and tampons and I had to keep them all.

Soon after, I started a self-development class (in leadership) in which one must create a community project. That is when I decided to finally do something with all those pads. I would find a way to get them to women who needed them. I knew I could increase the benefits of my project by gathering feminine hygiene products from other women and, also, creating homemade reusable pads (a more eco-friendly option).

I had read about Lunapads International in a magazine and briefly visited their site and decided to give them a call to inquire about their Pads4Girls project and their shipping process. Not only did they explain the process but they even said they would help me by sending the reusable pads I created to organizations working in foreign countries! I was delighted to hear this and have been working hard at collecting and making pads since. So far I have collected and donated just over 400 disposable pads and tampons to a local shelter but my goal is to reach and help as many women as possible both near and far.

Please send an email to padsforpower@hotmail.com if you are interested in contributing disposable feminine hygiene products, materials to make reusable pads, or would like to help sew the pads (see the video on Lunapads.com’s donate pads page). Any kind of help would be greatly appreciated.

Whether you’re planning on going camping, attending summer music festivals, doing some long-distance adventure travel, or just heading to the beach this summer, personal hygiene is always a consideration.  Here are some ideas on how to manage menstruation and elimination while enjoying summer adventures.

An aspect of travel that can often be a source of frustration is simply staying clean.  While it may be a stretch to imagine for the first time, being able to urinate while standing up (like a man!) can actually make things a lot easier.  Imagine rather than having to squat in scratchy underbrush, or hover above a toilet, simply being able to relieve oneself without having to completely remove one’s pants, shorts or undergarment.  The pStyle is a small, durable plastic funnel that enables this process with a minimum of fuss or hassle – just point and shoot, as it were.

Most of us will also need to think about how to manage our menses while away from home.  Depending on the length of the trip, heaviness of flow, and availability of supplies at the destination, it can be tricky, not to mention taking up valuable luggage real estate.  Supplies may not be available locally, and can be easily damaged and rendered useless if not packed carefully.

And then there’s the question of disposal – where does one put used pads and tampons in the wilderness?  Given today’s “leave only footprints” camping credo, one could well be faced with the dilemma of packing along used supplies versus burying or burning them, hardly eco-friendly alternatives.

Reusable silicone menstrual cups such as the DivaCup obviate these dilemmas, and are becoming increasingly popular with female travelers as a result.  Add the bonuses of not having to change a cup for up to 12 hours, financial savings and reusable eco-friendliness to boot, and you’ve found your new best travel buddy.  They’re also ideal for sports and swimming.

Caring for these products properly is of course an important consideration, which brings me to yet another travel wonder-product: Wysi-Wipes. Wysi-Wipes are compressed, biodegradable personal wipes that require only some water and a bit of soap to become a “wet wipe”, perfect for cleaning cups, pStyles, or even you ;-). For a complete travel kit, team up all of these products, plus a peri bottle to hold some water or a cleansing solution, and put them in one of our new travel pouches.  And to top it off, it’s all on sale this month, plus ALL orders this month get 2 FREE Wysi-Wipes (while quantities last.)  Happy trails from all of us at Lunapads!

Good news continues to come our way about initiatives bringing cloth pads to women and girls in Africa.  As discussed in this earlier post, millions of girls and women in Africa do not have access to adequate menstrual supplies.  Sadly, girls stay home and miss important school days because they have no means to deal with their period while at school.  While Proctor and Gamble have their “protecting futures” campaign (donating disposable pads to girls, thus creating a long-term waste problem), partners in our Pads4Girls initiative provide girls in rural areas of Ethiopia, Uganda and Kenya with a sustainable alternative: Lunapads!

While we recognize supplying cloth pads to girls and women is an important step, there are many others in Africa helping to take this initiative one step further.  Several colleagues of ours are building programs to train women to make the pads in their own community, thus creating employment and income for women.  Here are a few examples:

Sapna Dayal of Imagine1Day will be bringing Lunapads with her to Ethiopia in May with hopes to build skills and employment for local women to make and sell cloth pads.  When Carrie Jane Williams travelled to Uganda last fall to bring Lunapads to Uganda, she helped orchestrate the production of “AfriPads” right there on the spot.  While she was there, she met a young couple who became so excited by what they saw, that they are now completely devoted to getting AfriPads off the ground.   Pauls Grinvalds and Sonia Klumpp have plans to launch a six-month pilot project to determine the feasiblity of manufacturing and distributing cloth pads to the girls in Kitengeesa, in the Masaka District.  Paul and Sonia’s plans were featured in one of Uganda’s national newspapers: the Daily Mirror.  Hopefully this press will stimulate greater awareness of the problem and some funding for their project.  Please pass on the word on their behalf.

Recently we learned of an even larger cloth pad manufacturing program that was inspired by Lunapads.  Last week, I attended the annual Ethiopian dinner of Partners in the Horn of Africa. This Canadian charity works in Ethiopia and directs 100% of the donations directly to projects that involve building schools, bridges, wells, and providing group homes and centres for HIV orphans.

A niece of one of the board members showed her aunt a Lunapad, and from there, the idea of replicating our cloth pads in Ethiopia took off.  In 2008, a Partners-funded pilot project manufactured and distributed 20,000 modified Lunapads and 2,500 Lunapanties for girls in a rural school district near Addis Ababa.  For every $5,000 they invested in this project, over 7,000 more school days for girls were added.  We had no idea this was happening and are so happy to hear about the trickle effect Lunapads has already made in Ethiopia.

Partners also provides microfinancing for women entrepreneurs, and a result of this pilot project they will be expanding the program to set up a manufacturing facility to make 200,000 pads and employ local women.   It was inspiring to hear John Baigent, the Executive Director of Partners, talk about the cloth pad program so passionately to a group of 200 supporters at the dinner.  I was amused to hear that John has achieved “rock star status” among the women and girls because of the profound impact the cloth pads have brought to their community.  Hmm, I’m imagining John channelling Annie Lennox and leading the girls and women in a chorus of ”Sisters are doing it for themselves!”

The Partners cloth pad pilot project was made possible by the generous donation from a group of mothers in West Vancouver called Mom and Me.  Each Mother’s Day this group holds a family dance and in 2008 they raised almost $25,000 for the Partners cloth pad initiative.  I hope to attend the event this year with my family and would love to see this fundraising model replicated everywhere.  Because Partners covers all the administrative costs, 100% of the donations go directly towards the projects they fund.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if more groups replicated this idea and supported this initiative?

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.

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.

Lunapads and our generous customers have donated hundreds of pads to women and girls in developing nations in recent years, and we are now offering more ways than ever to help in our new Donate section.

Pads4Girls seeks to address the problem of girls in developing nations missing school due to a lack of adequate menstrual supplies.  Paying homage to Deanna Duke’s original Goods4Girls project (sadly now defunct), we decided to keep the name simple as well as make it easy for anyone already aware of Goods4Girls to know that we are up to pretty much exactly the same thing.  Here’s a quickie fact sheet on the drastic difference that missing school can have on girls’ lives.  In comparison to the Always “protecting futures” campaign, Pads4Girls seeks to offer a more sustainable, environmentally responsible solution.

We had the recent pleasure of connecting with Sapna Dayal, Executive Director of Imagine1Day, a Vancouver based NGO (started by the founders of lululemon athletica) whose mission is to provide primary education for children in Ethiopia.  Watch our short video interview with Sapna to learn what Imagine1Day is doing, why this work is so personal to to Sapna and how you can fill her suitcase with Pads4Girls when she returns to Ethiopia in May.





We are so encouraged by the growing public interest in helping girls in Africa. This week alone, we added 2 new organizations and are collecting Pads4Girls for communities in Uganda, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Ethiopia.  You can learn about each organization in the Donate section of our site, and we will continue to update our list of recipients as we connect with them.  The synergies of our common mission ~ to help keep girls in school and provide a more sustainable solution is incredibly exciting.  But this is just the beginning!  We are currently in the midst of bigger plans which include providing resources and training to allow the women in Africa make the pads themselves and create a source of income for their families.  We’ll tell you more about this in a future blog post as this project develops.

You can also choose to donate Maxi Pads for inclusion in Birth Kits being distributed by Shanti Uganda, a Vancouver based NGO helping women in rural Uganda .  And of course, cash donations can be made to support the purchase of  pads.

To watch more videos about our Pads4Girls campaign, go to our YouTube channel here.

Thank you from the bottom of our hearts!

Many of you are aware of the sad news that Goods4Girls is no longer in operation.  While there have been some calls for Lunapads, GladRags and others to pick up where G4G’s founder Deanna Duke left off, we have decided to continue the spirit of G4G’s work with our own yet-to-be-named program.

While G4G has been a major recipient of donated pads, we have also been working with many groups with aims similar to G4G’s for some time.  The latest one is the Lugari Community Resource Centre in western Kenya.  Founder Jenipher Wasike is currently in Vancouver fundraising for this wonderful initiative that includes agriculture, tree planting, and a women’s group.  The women currently make crafts which are then sold at local markets.  They also hope to start making and selling their own washable pads (more on that soon)!

Jenipher will be returning to Kenya on February 25th and we are trying to get as many Goods4Girls Kits (new name tba, but thanks in the meantime Crunchy, for our continued use of it!) donated as possible prior to her depature.  Please watch this video of Jenipher and consider purchasing a kit.  For each kit purchased until her departure, Lunapads will donate a matching kit.

PS: To view the high quality version of this video, simply hover over the arrow on the bottom right of the viewer & click HQ.  Visit our YouTube page here to rate or comment on this video. From this page, you will also be able to share our video via facebook, digg, myspace and so on. If you have your own YouTube account, please help us spread the word by adding it to your favorites. Thank you! -Lisa