Speaker Meeting with Partners, 6.45 for 7pm

The speaker at this meeting was Dr Rosa Matheson, the founder of the Freedom Kit Bags charity, and also founder trustee of the ‘Friends of Angels Orphanage’ in Nepal.  The co-founder of Freedom Kit Bags is Dr Rosa’s husband Dr Ian Matheson.  Another member of the FKB team is Brian Mildenhall (in the picture on the right) who accompanied Dr Rosa, he first visited Nepal in 2007 and has returned most years since. 

Having access to sanitary wear is something women in the developed world take for granted, but menstrual hygiene management is an alien concept for many in Nepal. 

Nepalese women and girls do hard physical labour. They dig the fields and grow the food, they harvest the crop and pound the grain, they cook the food and keep the house clean.  Life is hard for them and menstruation is an extra heavy burden to bear, especially as the wearing of underwear is not common.

Dr Rosa and the team teach that menstruation is not a women's problem, it is a natural fact of life and as such should be known and understood by all, women and girls and men and boys.  She said: “It’s very pleasing when young men come just wanting to understand and to challenge the myths around menstruation. Teaching the facts is vital to changing not just minds but also hearts in a society with long-held entrenched beliefs. Getting younger generations engaged is the way forward.“ 

A Freedom Kit Bag contains three pairs of panties, three pad holders, nine day pads, three night pads and a purse.  This purse allows a girl to carry a clean supply (or soiled article) with her from/to school, or a woman to go to market, with no worries or embarrassment of being 'caught short'.  There is a lack of storage space in village homes in Nepal so the FKB keeps all its contents together in a clean, accessible environment.

It also contains one aqua-breathe soap bag, a bar of soap, a length of rope and some clothes pegs, and an information sheet.  It is essential for good health that underwear is washed, hung out and air/sun dried. Washing lines cost money, so clothes are dried on the bushes or grass, generating bacteria in the materials which then transfers and causes infections.

Many influential people in Nepal are helping Freedom Kit Bags, whether it be production, distribution or promotion.  For example, Gyan Bahadur Tamang, head teacher at Shree Golma Devi Secondary School, is fully behind the programme and has gone further by building a girls only toilet block at his school.  This is important because most school toilets are not segregated.  He has also hosted a Freedom Kit Bag sewing room in his school and organised a distribution to the women in his home village and to a neighbouring school.

To date, 15,000 Kit Bags, all manufactured in Nepal, have been distributed.  Women and girls are being empowered, health is improving and education is not being interrupted.

Freedom Kit Bags website