Menstrual hygiene sessions for women in Za’atari camp(Part1)

Za’atari Camp has about 83,500 refugees living in it at the moment.  Almost exactly half are women.   In the districts where JEN works there are about 3,600 women between ages 12 and 39 years old. Knowledge about how to handle menstruation and other women’s topics is usually shared between mother or aunt and the younger generation.  Many women in the camp did not receive any formal education about health or hygiene so they don’t always have accurate information to share.  Also, many families have been split apart so that daughters are here without the women in the family who would normally guide them.  JEN decided to offer menstrual hygiene sessions in the camp to help women and adolescent girls understand how to care for themselves.

In February, six JEN staff began preparing menstrual hygiene messages to share with the women in the camp.   We met four times to discuss what the important things are for women to know. We developed diagrams and simple messages to explain what the menstrual cycle is and how to handle it hygienically and we developed responses to myths we thought that people would ask us about.   One way that JEN spreads hygiene messages in the community is through volunteer Community Hygiene Promoters.  For this topic we trained 13 female Community Hygiene Promoters on the information that we prepared.  Since menstrual hygiene can be a little uncomfortable for people to discuss we had the Community Hygiene Promoters practice delivering the session to each other in small groups before sharing it with women in the community.  We asked each Community Hygiene Promoter to commit to delivering the session 3 times over the next 2 months.

What happens at the CHP Sessions?

(To Be Continued)

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