La Ruta de La Salud Vaginal: The Fundraiser! August 2018
In Mama Aicha we are already doing our bags, cause in August we are going home!
And when we say we are going home, it also means, we are going home to keep up the great work that many have already started and keep doing on a daily basis after the impact of hurricane Maria.
For this reason, in Mama Aicha we created the Reproductive Justice Campaign: “La Ruta de la Salud Vaginal” (Vaginal Health route).
How do we want to do this:
Mama Aicha will connect with at least 5 organizations that has collaborated in the past around the mountains of Puerto Rico, to train at least 100 women (20 women per group is the target) around the topic of Vaginal Health: Infection prevention and natural remedies treatment during the last week of August, 2018.
Within this class, women across the island will get trained as Health Mentors and will not only learn how to detect the main vaginal infections affecting women bodies, but also how to treat them naturally, how to prevent them to happen again, and when it is the best time to refer to gyne/medical care. Class is composed of 2 hours training and 1 hour lab.
With the Health Mentor component we want to support women to support other women and people in their communities. With the challenges of lack of water and electricity in certain zones of the island, the accessibility to basic sexual and reproductive health care services and treatment might look different from person to person, as well as municipality to municipality.
In Mama Aicha we only want to provide the basic training, understanding that women in our communities will do the rest and what they do best; share the information among their comadres!
How can you help?
You can as an organization, group, or as an individual, sponsor a whole group or a woman. In Mama Aicha we will be posting the organizations that will be participating in “La Ruta”, and their background and history working with our communities. This could make it easier for you to understand the campaign, to decide which group to support or maybe, you just decide to donate a specific amount that you can afford that we can direct towards all the groups.
The money collected is never intended to pay me or my helpers for any educational services nor tickets to Puerto Rico. This is something we do voluntarily from our hearts and our whole hearts only.
What can your sponsorship cover?
Self-exam care kit for 1 participant is $25 and includes speculum, lubricant, medicinal douche and instructions on how to do the self exam at home.
Yoni herbal self care bag for 1 participant is $15, and includes mixture of herbs, and instructions of how to do vaginal steam bags
$20 includes meals for 1 participant: coffee, breakfast snacks, lunch and drinks
$20 per participant can cover miscellaneous: gas, printing materials and materials to work on the lab in order to learn how create natural remedies (herbs, essential oils, etc.).
Whole sponsorship of $80 per woman covers all above mentioned, plus the training in their own communities.
In order to keep transparency, all donations will be notified at our page trough screenshots and into our excel sheets, unless if donors wish to remain anonymous.
We will invest the money in local organizations that work with herbs, food, printing and speculum kits as we want all the money to go to our communities and organizations. Said this, unfortunately, we won’t be accepting donations of materials to bring with us. Our goal is to support our local economy as well.
If the whole amount of the fundraiser is not met, we will provide enough kits to raffle around the groups; but wouldn’t it be amazing that each of the women ends up with one? We agree as well!
If we surpass the amount of the fundraising, we will be donating the surplus equally to all organizations in PR involved.
Mama Aicha will report money expenses and pictures through the Facebook page and will share the excel sheet with all numbers at the end of the educational trip as we have always done before.
Notice that although we are using the term “woman” in our campaign, in Mama Aicha we open the workshop to all bodies and identities as we believe not all women have vaginas, and not all vagina- bodies identify as women. Get over it people! ;)
In Resistance and Love,
Jacoba (Jackie) and all who collaborate and conspire beautiful things in Mama Aicha with me.