Educate a Girl, Sustain a Community!

With your generous donations, we have raised enough money to help 515 girls stay in school across southern Africa every day of the month! Donations for this initiative are now closed. We will be delivering the Be Girl panties to the Children in the Wilderness project in May. Check back on our blog in June to read about our journey.

The only thing a period should end is a sentence—not an education.

Young women in western countries take for granted that they will never need to miss a day of school because of a lack of sanitary products for their monthly cycle. But the reality is very different for the 250 million young girls around the world who lack access to safe menstrual management products. Without the necessary sanitary products, these girls stay home during their menstrual cycles and miss up to a week of school every month. Many of these girls choose to drop out of school, which affects the overall wellbeing of their communities and is directly tied to a country’s GDP.

With Be Girl panties, girls don’t have to miss school because of their periods. The Period Panty is a pair of underwear created by Be Girl and formulated with a leak-proof bottom. The panty can be filled with any reusable or disposable filler that is available to each individual girl, making it easy, accessible, and environmentally friendly!

As the founder of Pack for a Purpose and a committed PfaP traveler, I once again have the great joy of being able to take meaningful supplies for young women in southern Africa. My husband and I will be traveling there in May and delivering supplies to benefit the girls involved in the Children in the Wilderness program, founded by Wilderness Safaris. By Packing for a Purpose, the trip we take will go farther than the miles we travel.

In collaboration with Wilderness and Be Girl, we will deliver Period Panties, which will allow the girls to stay in school during their menstrual cycle and empower them to continue their education without a monthly interruption. Educate a girl. Sustain a community.

Last year, we met an amazing young woman, Cassandra Cassidy. Cassandra is a Wood Scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is passionate about helping to keep girls in school. She started an Indiegogo campaign which helped raise enough funds for 127 pairs of Be Girl panties. We were able to deliver them to Dr. Sue Snyman, the Children in the Wilderness Regional Programme Director, on our trip to Africa in 2016.

For our 2017 trip, we want to increase this number to at least 500 pairs—but we need your help. As a PfaP traveler, I am inviting women and those who wish to honor the women in their lives along with my husband and I to fill up four suitcases with Be Girl panties.

Thank you for helping to ignite change and support young women around the world. It is the right of every girl to be proud every day of the month!