Gigi Ermoyenous Ambassador for our Positive Periods Project

Gigi Ermoyenous explains her motivation for becoming an ambassador for the Steve Sinnott Foundation, and why our Positive Periods Project is so important to her.

Gigi Ermoyenous: I'm in the final year of sixth form and preparing to take my A-levels. I'm also an ambassador for The Steve Sinnott Foundation’s Positive Periods Project, as well as for the charity Period Power.

The challenges caused by menstruation, and the unfairness of period poverty, are two things that for as long as I can remember I have cared about. In 2017 I worked with my school to set up dignity boxes in toilets. I believe that period products are needed just as much as toilet paper, and as one is provided for free, the other should be too.

Environmental impact

My other passion when discussing periods is the benefit of reusable products. People need to be aware of the massive amount of plastic and chemical usage in period products. 90% of pads are plastic, that’s the equivalent of about four carrier bags per product. Not only is this harmful to the environment but also potentially to bodies too, alongside fragrances, beaches, gelling agents, and are causing environmental and health problems.

The most common menstrual products are veritable cornucopia of plastic. Tampons come wrapped in plastic, some encased in plastic applicators, with plastic strings, and most surprisingly include plastic in the body of the tampon. Pads generally incorporate even more plastic, from the leak proof base, the synthetics to absorb fluid, to the packaging, then there are the chemical absorbers, fillers and lubricants, plus chemical and pesticide residues from the manufacturing process.

This is why I campaign to raise awareness of reusable sanitary products. They are a cheaper and more eco-friendly choice.

Helping girls stay in school

A couple of years ago I met The Steve Sinnott Foundation at an NEU (National Education Union) meeting where I learnt about their Positive Periods Project.

I feel honoured and proud to have been invited to work with The Steve Sinnott Foundation. Their Positive Period Project aims to teach communities how to make reusable period packs. We support women in The Gambia, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Malawi, Haiti and Cuba who struggle to afford period products. This causes them to suffer social stigma, and their education to stop. The Positive Periods Project teaches women and pupils in schools, to make their own reusable period pads from fabric and resources that they can source locally.

Positive Periods is creating independent women who manage their periods with dignity and pride. Girls miss approximately 52 days of education a year due to a lack of period products, and facilities to dispose of them properly. Once girls start to miss school, they often do not return.

Our project is proven to increase and prolong school attendance for girls, and benefits the local economy as the materials are sourced locally. Reusable pads are fairly easy to make and can stay in good condition for years. I've had a go at making some for myself, my family and friends, and intend to introduce the project in my school’s twin college, Asiky College in Namatumba Uganda.

A while ago pupils from my school carried out some research about periods and Asiky College. The results showed that most girls worried about getting their period while at school, and have missed school days because of their periods. An overwhelming number of pupils use items such as rags, newspapers, feathers, or over used disposable sanitary products. This of course can cause many different types of health problems.

The point of the Positive Periods Project is to ensure that girls around the world no longer have to experience this discomfort and indignity linked to their periods. Something that is natural and unavoidable for most women, and should be treated as such.

Thank you for the support

We are especially grateful to everyone who supported this work so far including the NEU and The Open Work Foundation for all their support with this project.

This project speaks to me of something empowering and inspiring. I wish to work with The Steve Sinnott Foundation in the next couple of years to gain first-hand experience. For now however, I will do everything I can to keep this project running, because we all struggled through the Covid pandemic.

I implore you all to donate what you can to support the Positive Periods Project. If you would like to find out what you can do to support the Positive Periods Project, please get in touch with Ann at ann.beatty@stevesinnottfoundation.org.uk or you can support now with our Gift Of Giving for Positive Periods.

Find out more about the our Positive Periods Project here.

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Gigi Ermoyenous • Feb 16, 2022

Capacity development as part of education

By BY JOSEPHINE DODDS • 06 May, 2024

Education has been identified as a key aspect to achieve societal development. This has been highlighted with the 2015 sustainable development goals, with goal 4 being to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. Education has also shifted to being a means to transmit peace and global tolerance through increasing the understanding of other cultures. This has tied in with the rise of capacity development initiatives in development practice that seek to empower and enable individuals and communities to build upon their preexisting capacities. It is a key strategy to ensure educational development by international organisations, governments, and communities. The main principles of capacity development are participation, locally driven agenda, ongoing learning, long term investment and building upon local capacities. By integrating these principles into educational development, it allows for school communities to become involved in peace building activities. Through following a locally driven agenda schools can become centres for fostering peace and understanding and address local issues that may prevent children from attending or staying in school. This is what the UNESCO Associated Schools network aims to achieve by involving schools and educational institutes at a global level, creating networks of educators and students that share information, knowledge and spread UNESCOs value of peace. It aims to join schools through four pillars of learning: learning to know, learning to do, learning to be and learning to live together to create sustainable learning and teaching environments that involve communities in conservation activities, petitions and cultural events. Schools undertake social and educational projects that allow students to get involved with supporting developmental and humanitarian organisations, through fundraising and field trips. Recently The Steve Sinnott Foundation organised an international trip to Japan for the 70th Anniversary of UNESCO ASPnet for the Arts and Culture for peace exchange, bringing together students from The Gambia, Oman, Singapore, Korea and Coventry. By expanding education to include individuals and communities’ local agendas and addressing international issues, education can provide a platform for ongoing learning and development. It allows for students to develop their ability to think critically and connect with others meaning they can both learn and understand issues that might not be highlighted otherwise. By allowing schools, students, and communities to connect and direct their own development and focusing on developing existing capacities, the meaning and aim of education shifts from traditional roles to being focused upon understanding and peace.

Women and girls education GUPT perspective

By BY DALILA EL BARHMI • 29 Apr, 2024

Women’s and Girls’ Full Participation in Society: “Are Palestinian women reaping the benefits of education in similar ways to the rest of the world?” Palestinian women continue to be some of the most educated women in the Middle East-North Africa (MENA) region. While women’s academic participation is indeed measurable, they are not reaping the benefits of education. Palestinian women, especially educated Palestinian women, are overlooked, and under-represented in Palestinian society. Current indicators reveal that access to education has not significantly improved women’s status in Palestinian society. It is therefore imperative to benefit from Palestinian women’s education and skills in society not only as a social right, but as a development necessity. The percentage of educated women in Palestine is remarkable and one of the highest around the world with a 99.6% in 2020 for completion in primary and upper secondary. While Palestinian women have always been visible in the national struggle, they have limited leadership and decision making-opportunities. Their participation in civil society and the formal government has been restricted. In decision making positions, women comprise only 8.3% of all ministers, 0% of ministerial representatives, and 6% of assistants to the ministerial representatives. Within all ministries women comprise 30% of staff. In the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, women are the majority, comprising 68.1%. Education unions leading by example: Education unions have viewed the education of future generations, with a focus on girls, as a form of protest, resistance to the country and Arab region’s ongoing-conflict, displacement, and upheaval. Accordingly, women and girls’ education has thrived in recent years. COVID 19 crisis a catalyst for transforming education unions: Education unions voiced that an appropriate response to COVID -19 in the education sector should consider the rights and best interests of students, teachers and education support personnel and involve education unions in developing the containment and recovery measures. This response accelerated the transformation process of the largest union in Palestine, the General Union of Palestinian Teachers (GUPT). They want to have a truly representative union and integrate women educators in the union decision making structures. Despite the pandemic, GUPT continued to engage in social dialogue with the government, continued to fight for decent working conditions and welfare for teachers and education personnel and engage in a process of trade union transformation reflecting the realities of the 21st century. The union stepped up during the rapid shift to distance learning, they have developed online programmes, trained teachers on distance learning and supported students to decrease inequality among learners. The union also urged that the transformation should also challenge discrimination and increase women’s involvement in education, in trade unions and in society. This process was a driver to enhance women’s leadership within the union’s structures. From words to action: Mechanisms put in place to enhance women educators’ participation. With the support of international sister organisations, GUPT developed their own strategy to promote women’s participation and leadership within their union and in education. They developed a strategy, and we identified the following objectives: Increase the number of women in key union leadership and decision-making bodies at the regional and national level, through capacity development training on leadership for women. They have also introduced policies such as gender quotas and allocated budgets for their gender equity programmes. Activate the role of their Women’s Committee and prioritise the recruitment of young female teachers. The union is also working to identify and address the barriers to women’s participation in union leadership and decision making. In education the union is working with the Ministry of Education to review school books so that gender discrimination is not inherently written into the curriculum. GUPT is also organising sensitization training for educators so that discriminatory stereotypes are not perpetuated in the classroom. Finally, for the GUPT it is important to secure the right to education for all Palestinian students, especially girls. Teaching and learning must occur in quality, safe environments. Every effort must be made to eradicate the different types of violence that occur all too frequently in and around educational settings.

Support the Women in our Public Schools on the way to Diversifying Teaching

By BY MARY CATHRYN RICKER • 22 Apr, 2024

Early in my work as the president of my local teacher’s union I was invited to a community leader meeting about reforming the teaching profession. Amidst the discussion of harsher teacher evaluations, raising standards for teaching, creating easier entry into the profession, merit pay for “good” teachers, and more, I brought up the fact that working conditions and salaries hadn’t meaningfully changed since the 1960s. “We’re in favor of paying math and science teachers more so they can be compensated closer to what they’d get in the private sector,” a business community representative replied, offering an idea that was not new to me. Full disclosure: my dad was a career math teacher from that era of math and science majors who answered their government’s call to become math and science teachers who would boost the United States of America’s bench in the space race. I could easily picture how a larger salary could have changed our family’s budget. Teachers’ unions like mine (and my dad’s) addressed pay disparities based on gender that were common a generation earlier by fighting for a salary schedule focused on experience and education. So, I offered back, “If we want to differentiate pay related to the most important job in education, then we should seriously consider paying kindergarten and first grade teachers more than anyone because they teach students to read, which is the rocket science of education,” alluding to an influential issue of AFT’s American Educator magazine from 1999. “Well, I’m sure those teachers are fine but I have volunteered in first grade classrooms and their work doesn’t compare to math and science teachers.” Oh. Interesting. We clearly weren’t going to see eye to eye in our differentiated pay conversation. More so, there are decades long gender stereotypes lurking behind that conversation. In addition to the history of gender based pay inequities, elementary school teachers are assumed to be female while more secondary teachers are male. There has long been a disconnect between the importance communities, elected officials, and countries have placed on education. From local funding efforts to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4: Quality Education, support for education is nearly universal in most communities. That support for education doesn’t always translate to support for educators and, with a majority of educators worldwide being female, that sets a dangerous precedent. Our teachers deserve professional working conditions because teaching and learning begins with their expertise. Additionally, a teacher’s working conditions are a student’s learning conditions and so administrators, public officials, or policymakers mistreating, undermining, or disrespecting teachers sends a message to students that teachers do not deserve respect, fair treatment, or professionalization. In addition to a stubborn lack of recognition of teachers as professionals, a vicious cycle exists around salary. Teachers have historically low wages because it is feminized and because it is feminized teacher’s wages are suppressed. The evidence that belonging to a union, with the ability to negotiate collectively, improves teacher compensation is key in disrupting this vicious cycle. Teaching has been a feminized profession for over a century and, despite efforts to diversify the profession, remains a feminized profession. In fact, the OECD reports that the gender gap increased from 2005 to 2019. In order for our students to have the most representative learning conditions, we need the most representative teachers so we must continue to diversify teaching to represent everyone in our communities, including by gender. Efforts like Black Men Teach, active in my home state of Minnesota, can make a meaningful difference. I would posit treating the current majority female teaching population as professionals—with professional wages, recognizing their expertise in teaching and learning rather than infantilizing them, respecting their commitment to education rather than exploiting it—would both model for students the way to treat women (and thereby model for female students how they can expect to be treated in any profession) and create the conditions for everyone to see teaching as a profession worth pursuing.