Koins for Kenya Internship

Well, here's a sneak peak of what I've been working on for my current internship. I don't have a lot of time, but I thought I'd paste my internship description from my "Letters of Intent" below:

My commitment to literacy and prevention is currently manifested in my work as an intern for the non-profit organization Koins for Kenya. Working in partnership with LDS Humanitarian Services, we are developing female hygiene kits to aid girls in rural Kenya to overcome the challenges that adolescence poses to continuing education. Many young girls are forced to either miss school regularly during their menstrual cycle or withdraw altogether given their limited resources and the unsanitary conditions of their schools. Withdrawal from school is often followed by a variety of tragedies ranging from early marriage, to contraction of HIV, to obstructed labor and impending fistula. Research has demonstrated that by preventing withdrawal from school many of these painful outcomes can be prevented. Having personally learned from my research not only the cost of dropping out, but the increased potential of girls who complete their educations, I am delighted to become a part of the solution. As a complement to the re-useable menstrual pads and other products found in the hygiene kits, I am developing educational materials for the instruction of women and girls regarding their hygiene and the changes that occur during puberty. Though the project has just begun, I already eagerly anticipate the opportunity to pilot these materials in Kenya this summer with local women and girls. I am thrilled at the prospect of being engaged in this important work which will truly help eliminate disparities at the ground level; enabling young girls in rural Kenya to have a better chance of becoming educated, healthy members of their society.

Sorry, I'd write a paragraph just for the blog, but this one is great (maybe a bit out of context) and I'm busy :). lol. But so far it is going AMAZING and I love love love my work. We're planning to pilot the booklets in Africa, but the hope is that they can eventuallybe distributed worldwide. Hence the pictures of girls from different countries. The picture above is of a the mock-up I've made of the first page of the Hygiene & Sanitation Booklet I'm making (one of three, the others will be on puberty and menstruation). In this booklet we talk about germs, parasites, hygiene (from washing hands to preventing vaginal infections, which are a common and painful problem), methods of sanitizing water, how to make a tippy-tap (a basic device that helps water to flow over hands while washing them) and how to make a rehydration drink (dehydration is the #1 cause of death among children in developing countries). Awesome right? And I get to draw a lot of the illustrations, which is SO fun. It's the perfect blend of my two passions :).

More to come later. For now, I'll leave you with these startling facts to ponder on:

"More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century."

and

"The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... the life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal."
--Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl Wudonn "Half the Sky"