Leanne, Brenna and I have spent the last few weeks at the Girl Child Movement in Rondebosch, creating a workshop focusing on menstruation and the environment as a part of our activist project. The Girl Child Movement is an organization that brings school aged girls from the townships together to discuss issues they face as women around health, sexuality, sexism, substance abuse, and to just have a safe space of their own that encourages empowerment and self confidence. If you want to know more about the issues we discussed in our workshop, read Leanne’s lovely blog post not too far below this one.
We held our workshop last weekend, which is the main reason I’m writing about the GCM now. Facilitation is always an experience, and we didn’t really know what to expect with this day, but overall it was positive. The girls were divided into primary school and high school groups, and were attending another workshop in the morning that we were all able to sit in on and observe, which made me feel more at ease. At my internship I’ve seen a lot of the planning stages that go into creating workshops and implementing peer education programs, so getting to see what the actual product can look like was pretty interesting.
Soon enough it was time for our presentation, which was a bit more educational and informational as opposed to the morning’s brainstorming session, which was a bit difficult. We tried to include a lot of energizing activities, but there were still some points where I could see the girls drifting off. I could feel an intense disconnect during some parts of the workshop – since none of us come from their communities it was really difficult for us to address issues we think might affect their communities surrounding menstruation and environmental issues. There were times when I thought to myself, we have no idea where these girls are coming from right now. I have a hard time with this, because I feel like the best person to address a community on issues of discrimination or sexism or violence against women is a person from within that community. I can’t even understand Xhosa for them, let alone speak it.
The workshop picked up later, though, when we started discussing alternative options for sanitary products such as pads or tampons. One of the alternatives we discussed is a menstrual cup, a small silicone cup that can be inserted like a tampon, and then washed and reused. This was definitely a revolutionary idea for most of the girls, which I completely understand because I remember my own reaction when I first heard about this option. However they seemed to open up to the idea and we were even able to give one away for one of the girls to try and take home to show her community.
Overall, I’m not sure how much of an impact we made with our workshop. I would like to think that the girls absorbed all of the information and are thinking of ways to bring it back to their communities. Like most experiences I have here in Cape Town I think it probably affected me much more than it did them. I’m glad we were able to see the GCM in action, and participate to some extent. Listening to the girls of all ages talk about why they like being a part of the movement, and how it has made them feel more empowered was one of the most positive parts of the day.
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