Pri­ma­ry schools in this coun­try’s cap­i­tal city, as well as those lo­cat­ed in the rur­al ar­eas of Trinidad, are fac­ing the chal­lenge of men­stru­at­ing girls flush­ing cloth in­to the toi­let as a re­sult of pe­ri­od pover­ty.

This was among the “shock­ing find­ings” that com­mu­ni­ty li­ai­son mon­i­tor­ing and eval­u­a­tion of­fi­cer at T&T Red Cross So­ci­ety Ale­jan­dra Mendez said was made dur­ing fo­cus groups with over 100 prin­ci­pals in the eight ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts in T&T.

“In rur­al ar­eas and al­so in Port-of-Spain schools are hav­ing chal­lenges with their plumb­ing be­cause girls are us­ing cloth be­cause they don’t have ac­cess to prod­ucts and that clogs the sys­tem and they on­ly un­der­stand this be­cause they have to bring a plumber and the whole thing has to be opened. It is fi­nan­cial­ly re­al­ly ex­pen­sive for the schools to go through this process,” Mendez said.

“But what is hap­pen­ing to girls in T&T is that they are us­ing what­ev­er cloth be­cause they do not have ac­cess to prod­ucts. It is hap­pen­ing in Port-of-Spain, it is hap­pen­ing in oth­er dis­tricts like the South East­ern dis­trict, it is hap­pen­ing in the St Patrick dis­trict so this is some­thing that should raise con­cerns,” she said.

An­oth­er thing that came from the study, Mendez said is that pri­ma­ry schools in Trinidad do not have a bud­get for men­stru­al health and hy­giene.

“This means they do not have dis­pos­able bins avail­able for girls,” Mendez said.

This she said is es­pe­cial­ly prob­lem­at­ic as girls are start­ing to reach pu­ber­ty around the age of 8, 9 and 10.

“They are still in pri­ma­ry school how­ev­er pri­ma­ry schools don’t have a bud­get for that but be­cause no­body is look­ing at it. It is some­thing that they try to man­age but some­times the so­lu­tion that they come up with are not best for the ex­pe­ri­ence of girls,” she said.

In To­ba­go they al­ready cater for men­stru­al health and hy­giene in pri­ma­ry school, she said.

Mendez said these dis­cov­er­ies were made dur­ing dis­cus­sions with the prin­ci­pals as part of the TTRCS’ Know Your Flow pro­gramme.

Mendez said the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic ex­ac­er­bat­ed pe­ri­od pover­ty in this coun­try, af­fect­ing both na­tion­als and mi­grants.

“So that is how ‘Know Your Flow’ was born which is our men­stru­al health and hy­giene pro­gramme. That is how it start­ed when we saw the need for ac­cess to men­stru­al ma­te­r­i­al,” Mendez said.

“We start­ed think­ing about pe­ri­od pover­ty and then the ques­tion came about how sus­tain­able is it for the Red Cross and for any oth­er NGO be­cause not on­ly is Red Cross fo­cused on that, there are many NGOs,” she said.

Mendez high­light­ed the work of the Help­ing Her Foun­da­tion, The Pineap­ple Foun­da­tion, and Fem­i­nitt who were all their part in ad­dress­ing men­stru­al health.

In the quest to see how sus­tain­able it was to ad­dress the is­sue, Mendez said the TTRCS start­ed re­search­ing to see how it could launch an im­pact­ful in­ter­ven­tion.

“And when we ad­dress pover­ty of any kind we have to look at ed­u­ca­tion. You can­not re­al­ly ad­dress pover­ty in any way if you don’t tack­le knowl­edge and ed­u­ca­tion. If you don’t you don’t de­vel­op peo­ple’s ca­pac­i­ty and strength­en their ca­pac­i­ty, you don’t cre­ate re­silience,” she said.

Pe­ri­od pover­ty is one of the pil­lars of the Know Your Flow pro­gramme which seeks to ad­dress ac­cess to ma­te­ri­als for women and girls es­pe­cial­ly in vul­ner­a­ble com­mu­ni­ties.

“We al­so tar­get the cul­tur­al and the so­ci­etal norms around the sub­ject of men­stru­a­tion be­cause be­lieve it or not it is still taboo,” she said.

Mendez said what they are try­ing to achieve is a na­tion­al base­line study, on men­stru­al health and hy­giene.

“Our end goal is main­stream men­stru­al health and hy­giene as a mat­ter of gen­der equal­i­ty and so­cial in­clu­sion be­cause we can­not speak about women’s rights and gen­der equal­i­ty when the bi­o­log­i­cal needs of 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion are not met,” she said.

Mendez said one of the goals of the pro­gramme is to as­sist in get­ting a draft pol­i­cy on men­stru­al health and hy­giene which will ad­dress pe­ri­od pover­ty but as ac­cess to ma­te­ri­als.

“So we are hop­ing that af­ter the base­line study we can get to­geth­er with oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions, oth­er NGOs and draft a na­tion­al pol­i­cy that we can present to the gov­ern­ment to as­sist and tack­le these is­sues,” she said.

“We al­so hope to de­vel­op a cur­ricu­lum for girls and boys. And this is the oth­er thing our prob­lem does not on­ly tar­get women and girls but al­so boys and men be­cause if 50 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion does not un­der­stand the needs of the oth­er 50 per cent we have a prob­lem,” Mendez said.

The pro­gramme is di­vid­ed in­to three phas­es, boys and girls 17 and un­der, women 18-45 and women 45 and over.

“Now we are go­ing to start in March to meet with girls and boys in the eight ed­u­ca­tion­al dis­tricts we are go­ing to do more than 30-40 fo­cus groups na­tion­al­ly, we are go­ing to meet with girls in cor­rec­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties, we are go­ing to meet with girls with dis­abil­i­ties, and with mi­grant girls as well,” Mendez said.

She said when they gath­er all of the da­ta they will bring in an ex­pert to analyse it and present the find­ings.

“And then based on those find­ings we are go­ing to de­vel­op a cur­ricu­lum to ad­dress the lack of knowl­edge,” she said.

Mendez said there is cur­rent­ly a com­pe­ti­tion for girls to draw a char­ac­ter that they feel rep­re­sents their men­stru­al cy­cle.

They al­so have to write five ques­tions that they have about men­stru­a­tion.

“With these, we are try­ing to un­der­stand from an­oth­er point of view, what we are do­ing is for­ma­tive re­search so we are do­ing qual­i­ta­tive re­search, quan­ti­ta­tive re­search but this is par­tic­i­pa­to­ry re­search,” she said.

The boys are al­so be­ing asked to write the five first words that come to mind when they think of men­stru­a­tion and five things they would like to know about it.

“We are try­ing to give voice to every­one, af­ter we have all that af­ter we fin­ish with menopausal women then we can have enough ev­i­dence to sug­gest or draft a men­stru­al health and hy­giene pol­i­cy that the gov­ern­ment can ben­e­fit from and pol­ish and bring ex­perts too be­cause they will have all the da­ta and that is how red cross works,” Mendez said.

Mendez said she feels the study is im­por­tant as the is­sue of men­stru­al health and hy­giene was bare­ly men­tioned in the Na­tion­al Sex­u­al and Re­pro­duc­tive Health pol­i­cy that was pub­lished in 2020.

She said both the Health Min­istry and the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion have been sup­port­ive of the Know Your Flow cam­paign.

“We just go through the mo­tions and we don’t ed­u­cate our­selves and we have not been ed­u­cat­ed enough in the sub­ject of men­stru­a­tion and what is best, what are the prod­ucts that are avail­able in the mar­ket, which should be used,” Mendez said.

“We need to de­vel­op the ca­pac­i­ty in the so­ci­ety to ad­dress men­stru­al health and hy­giene and gen­er­ate that pos­i­tive out­come for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions,” she said.