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Today I am going to tell you the story of our Butterfly project.

I have been a member of SI Lavaux for more than 20 years and regularly read THE LINK, SI Forum and newsletters. During that time, I have no recollection of a report on a project that was not completed. Convinced of the usefulness of such feedback, I wanted to tell you about our experience in Kenya.

 

In 2008, Evelyne (a Kenyan friend who has been living in Switzerland for 20 years) told us about girls’ absenteeism from school in developing countries due to menstruation and the lack of sanitary products.

 

While thinking about how we could help, we heard that an SI club in Kenya was looking to provide sanitary materials to girls. The idea arose to join forces. We approached the club, the plan took shape, and the Kenya Butterfly Project was born.

 

The plan

 

The plan was to produce reusable sanitary kits and pair them with instructions, in Swahili and English, on how to wash the strips and on sexually transmitted diseases.

 

  • The sewing room and two mechanical sewing machines (electricity had not yet arrived) would be provided to us free of charge by the NGO Help Khachonge.
  • We would provide the start-up capital and recruit local women to work in the workshop.
  • The project should, after 5 years, be self-supporting and autonomous.
  • Evelyne would visit the project regularly, acting as a link between the Kenyan team and us, and promoting the kits to schools.

 

With the financial support of other Swiss clubs (Nyon, Broye and Vevey) and some private individuals, we launched our project in 2009.

 

The workshop

The cultural reality

 

I visited several times, and worked with the seamstresses. Two of my observations, in particular, illustrate some of the difficulties encountered:

 

  1. Once, when I arrived, I found one of the seamstresses cutting the fabric into strips that were far too small. The woman in charge of this task the day before had made a mistake and, as the supervisor didn’t say anything, the next woman simply continued the error…

 

  1. While sewing, I discussed the topic of menstruation with the women. All of them were mothers of teenage or adult daughters, yet none of them had brought up menstrual hygiene with their daughters. I could see their immense embarrassment at talking about this ‘shameful’ subject. And with it the realisation that we couldn’t rely on them to promote the kits…

 

Menstrual hygiene class here in the Mount Elgon area, a 3-hour drive from Khachonge

 

The economic reality

It took two years, with over 400 kits in stock before we were contacted by the wife of the local governor, who was looking for sanitary strips to distribute in schools as a promotion for her husband’s upcoming election. This finally enabled us to sell our entire stock (at cost price) to schools in the area, and to secure sales for the next three years.

 

In the meantime, electricity came to town, we bought two electric sewing machines and planned to increase output and lower cost per kit. Everything seemed to be running smoothly.

 

An incident towards the end of the fourth year of production made us think

Evelyne arrived at the workshop unexpectedly to find it closed. The seamstresses, still receiving their wages, explained that they had finished making 300 kits, which was the number that the governor’s wife had committed to buy.

 

They felt that they had done their job and had earned their wages for the rest of the year. When asked why she had not reported the absence of the workers, the workshop supervisor’s response was: “If I say something, the person is hurt and if tomorrow I need them, they let me down. And since we still need each other in our community, I didn’t say anything.”

 

The end

At the beginning of the 5th year of production, it became clear that we would not achieve our third goal, of making the project self-sustaining. So, we decided to talk to the seamstresses.

 

To our surprise, they appeared to have a passive reaction to losing their jobs and to local girls no longer having access to sanitary protection. This, coupled with the difficulties of finding a new buyer, contributed to our decision not to inject new capital to keep the workshop going.

 

At the beginning of the 6th year, after having transformed the last roll of fabric into sanitary strips, we closed the workshop and our project.

 

Conclusions

Over 5 years, we produced and distributed about 1,800 kits, ensuring menstrual hygiene to as many girls for 2 years. We enabled eight women to learn to sew and earn a small income. We did not, however, achieve our third goal: the autonomy and long-term existence of the workshop. The reasons for this were cultural differences which emerged during the project and were incompatible with its complete success.

 

By publishing our experiences, perhaps especially the unsuccessful ones, we hope to help other clubs avoid repeating the same mistakes.

 

Ruth Wermelinger ,

SI Lavaux (Switzerland)

 


To benefit from the experience and guidance of other clubs, go to the PFR module of our Extranet. Here you can report your projects and better achieve the Soroptimist causes we all hold so dearly.