Periods matter: How Finnish and Ugandan Scouts are breaking menstrual taboos

7 minutes
Ugandan Scout wearing a t-shirt that in yellow color reads: No Missed School Days.
Copyright
Afra Murungi

In Uganda, girls do not enjoy the same level of freedom and equity as boys. UNESCO estimates that one in ten girls in Sub-Saharan Africa misses a week of school every month due to their periods, fuelling inequity between girls and boys both at school and on a larger scale.

Nearly 7,000 kilometres further north and menstruation is also considered somewhat of a taboo subject in Finland where the widespread use of roundabout expressions, such as “jam weeks” or “that time of the month”, reinforce negative stigmas and feelings of shame and embarrassment.

In support of girls' schooling and changing attitudes towards menstruation, the Guides and Scouts of Finland, the Uganda Scouts Association and the Uganda Girl Guides Association launched “No Missed School Days”, a project to encourage better menstrual health and gender sensitivity through their organisations' Scouting programmes. The project also supports positive attitudes toward girls education, including raising awareness in societies and advocating for girls. 

The partnership meets in Uganda and teaches a group how to sew menstrual pads in schools and communities.
Copyright
Among George William

Empowering girls to stay in school during their periods

The idea behind “No Missed School Days” began in 2016 when the Guides and Scouts of Finland were searching for a potential African partner to develop a project with external funding. Together with the Uganda Scout Association, they conducted a pilot project built around the belief that inequity and gender should never jeopardise someone’s life prospects.

The Keep Girls in School Through Menstrual Hygiene Management” programme provided 20 Scout leaders with the knowledge and skills needed to handle menstrual health issues in school with the aim of keeping girls in school during their periods. After receiving their training, Scout leaders taught their Scouts how to make sanitary towels and gave them basic information about menstrual health and gender equality, such as the limitations of gender roles. 

Crucially, both girls and boys took part in order to widen and deepen the understanding of menstrual health. The boys were also instructed to give the sanitary towels to their sisters or girls in their class.

“Menstruation is a natural thing, around which beliefs and taboos have unfortunately accumulated over time. In order to break these, we need normal, natural, and correct speech about menstruation. If you don't start talking about menstruation when they start, it's already too late. If you want to pass on correct information, it's good to do it before children begin to discuss it among themselves with incorrect information or when beliefs begin to take root in the child's mind,” said Laura Silver, Project Manager of Guides and Scouts of Finland.

During the pilot project, the Scouts realised that they wanted to expand their awareness efforts to beyond activities for youth. After receiving funding from Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, the “No Missed School Days” project was launched in 2019.

The NoMissedSchoolDays badge.
Copyright
Uganda Scouts Association

3,000 badges awarded, 110,000 people reached

So far, the project has reached more than 110,000 people thanks to social media and other communications channels, as well as the use of community theatre and door-to-door campaigns. By the end of 2021, Ugandan Scouts had distributed 1,000 pieces of educational material on gender equality and menstrual health. 

"I became pregnant at 12 years old during the long school lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic was a tough time at home and I was convinced that having sex for my basic needs would cause no harm and that’s how I got pregnant. I thought it was the end of my life and that I would not have a good education again. But during a door-to-door campaign by the Guides and Scouts that was done before the schools opened, my classmates encouraged me to go back to school. They told me to not give up and come back to school even as a young mother. The Guides and Scouts at my school enabled me to gain confidence again and tell other girls to stand on their feet and learn to say no. I have also learnt to make reusable sanitary pads that I am giving to my community members. This will ensure that girls such as myself do not go through the same,expressed a participant of the No Missed School Days project in Uganda.

Despite the success of the project, the Scouts and guides knew that long-lasting change had to come from within. For that reason, 400 Scout leaders and teachers in Uganda were trained on gender equality and menstrual health and 3,600 Scouts and guides - both girls and boys - participated in science, technology, engineering and maths activities at school to break stereotypes around gender. Awareness raising workshops were used to teach 1,800 students how to make reusable sanitary pads.

Scouts learn how to sew menstrual pads.
Copyright
Uganda Scouts Association

During guiding and Scouting events, Finnish Scouts held workshops on gender equality and menstrual health, organised activities such as sewing reusable menstrual pads. At the Finnjamboree Kajo, posters were put up inside bathrooms with information on menstruation and a partnership was built with Vuokkoset, a Finnish menstrual product manufacturer, to provide sanitary products to participants. The activities also helped bring these issues to the public’s attention.

Bringing more visibility, Finnish and Ugandan Scouts developed a "NoMissedSchoolDays" badge to promote menstrual health and the project’s achievements. To date, around 3,000 Scouts and guides were awarded theirs for completing activities like learning how to act in camp conditions if themselves or a friend started menstruating. They also learned how to deal with societal prejudices and stigmas around menstrual health and how menstruation is viewed in other countries.

Scouts from Finland play with one of the games developed to raise awareness.
Copyright
Partiolaiset

To get a better understanding of the issues, the Scouts and Guides of Finland conducted a survey of 240 girls around the country in 2021. They found that 50% of the respondents had considered not attending an event because they were on their period. A further 16% had skipped an event because of their period, mainly because they thought that it would be too difficult to maintain good menstrual health while camping and that menstruation is a taboo subject. A lack of trash cans in the toilets - some added that trash cans should not be see through - and running water were also significant concerns.

In addition, 42% of respondents did not know if their troop’s emergency kit contained menstrual pads - which it should - and said that menstrual health is not given enough attention during events.

Even though the project ended in 2022, Laura from the Guides and Scouts of Finland said that its activities will continue in the Scouting programmes both in Finland and Uganda in order to “foster connections and promote positive change”. 

“As a global Movement reaching children and youth, Guiding and Scouting has a lot of potential in global development and it is a great platform to implement transformative projects, to cooperate and to change the world,” she said.

 

This article is part of the Scouting Forward campaign that aims to celebrate how scouting empowers youth to become active citizens to respond to the social, economic, and environmental challenges facing our world, supported by the Erasmus+ programme.