by Brenda Simmons
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Over 70 girls and women of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gathered in early August to help with a project for women in Haiti. It was part of an annual youth conference for the Far West Missouri Stake which was held Aug. 2-5 at Morrell Ranch in Gallatin, and was the second time a sizeable group from the church gathered to work together. The first was in early June when 150 girls and women gathered at Mozingo Like just outside of Maryville, at an annual girls camp for the church.
On the first occasion, Jola Casey, founder of Haitian Women’s Outreach, Madison, Kan., shared stories and pictures of her experiences in Haiti to the girls camp attendees.
“Women are oppressed by their culture in Haiti,” Casey said. “They do all the work in the family. It is a difficult culture for women and teenage girls.”
She continued: “One thing all women all over the world have in common is menstruation.”
However, she said, not all women have access to materials that help them function normally during their period.
Such is the case with women in Haiti. Without any sanitation products, women are forced to use corn husks or other organic materials for protection. Some girls even resort to sitting on buckets until the bleeding has stopped.
As a result, women, who are often the breadwinners for their families, cannot go to work and girls cannot go to school while menstruating. Their lives literally stop.
As a youth minister for the Presbyterian Church, Casey saw a need while on her first youth ministry trip to Haiti and decided to do something about it.
“God inspired me and gave me passion for the women there,” she said.
When she returned stateside, Casey found a pattern for reusable, washable sanitary napkins that could be sewn and given to the women and girls of Haiti.
Her second trip was more organized for this purpose. As her ministry group travelled to different locations, they held meetings for all who could come, usually with roughly 50 women and girls in attendance. There, they taught the women about their bodily functions, since this is not taught in Haitian schools. Every woman and girl then received a sanitation kit as well as a gospel message of peace and love.
“God loves everyone – He knows no boundaries,” Casey said.
During the LDS girls camp, Casey, along with her best friend, Ronda Lickteig, Trenton, helped campers cut and pin close to 2,000 sanitary napkins and string several hundred drawstring bags. They were sent out to local congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be sewn and assembled with the other items in the kit.
Kits include five pairs of underwear, 10 flannel napkins made of a higher concentration of cotton, six safety pins and an inspirational message in their language, which translated reads: “This kit comes to you with God’s love. It could only be provided by God’s Grace. I pray that it is a blessing to you. Jesus loves you and so do I.”
It is all placed in a drawstring bag, which is just as valuable to the women as the supplies within.
While the napkins are reusable, they only last roughly one year so there is always a need for more. In addition to their use for menstruating, older women have also found a use for them for incontinence problems. The napkins have given women and girls of all ages confidence to live normal lives.
Project organizers originally planned on only making 200 napkins for Haitian Women’s Outreach. However, “out of the blue, a member of our church volunteered to make us 500 drawstring bags with her own donated materials,” said Pam Lawson, secretary in the Young Women’s organization of the Far West Missouri Stake. “It was then that I understood our Heavenly Father wanted more than just 200 napkins for His daughters in Haiti.”
This inspired organizers to expand the service project to fill those 500 bags. The Missouri Star Quilt Company in Hamilton donated all of the flannel material and cotton batting for the napkins, and with the help of the girls at camp and youth conference, they were on their way toward completing their goal. All napkins have been assembled and await being sewn around the edges, which will be done by church volunteers in their homes.
The organizers’ goal is to have the kits ready to be sent to Haiti this fall. 
Donations are still needed, however. In order to complete the kits, youth leaders are still in need of 2,500 pair of underwear in women’s small and medium and youth large and extra-large sizes. To donate, please contact Lawson at [email protected].