New Hampshire Pilates instructor collects more than 5,000 pairs of underwear to help girls in Kenya

By Katherine Underwood

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    PORTSMOUTH, New Hampshire (WMUR) — A Portsmouth woman is raising awareness of a lack of sanitary products for young girls in rural communities and around the world.

“These are students who are living on less than 1 dollar a day,” Faith Doucette, of KenyaConnect, said.

Many families in Kenya are experiencing period poverty, which is when a family can’t afford to buy sanitary products, forcing young girls to miss school and activities during their cycle every month.

“It was just something I never thought of as an American woman that not having sanitary products would prevent a child or girl from going to school,” Lindsey Burns, a Pilates instructor, said.

Burns first learned about period poverty from her friend Sharon Runge, a University of New Hampshire graduate and the executive director of KenyaConnect.

“If you have no way to manage your period and you’re bleeding, where people might make fun of you, or you just don’t know how to manage it, it’s rough,” Runge said.

Runge spends several weeks a year in Wamunyu, Kenya, and told Burns that they could use some new pairs of underwear for the female students.

“With the hope of maybe collecting 300 pairs,” Runge said.

Burns started a panty drive at the Club Pilates studio in Portsmouth, and underwear started pouring in.

To date, Burns has collected more than 5,000 pairs.

“It resonated immediately with our members who are mostly women, but even our male members were Venmo-ing because they knew that their daughters, granddaughters, their wives, it resonated with everybody,” Burns said.

Burns brought the underwear to Kenya last month. Each girl gets 2-3 pairs in a free kit that also includes reusable sanitary pads made by local women.

“There was one girl who came up, and she had a huge personality, and she just wrapped her arms around me and said, ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you,’ and I think she even gave me a noogie,” Burns said.

The effort is all part of a non-profit program called Wings Poa to address period poverty.

“Poa in Swahili means cool, and so the kids have wings like a synthetic pant that might have to hook it on the undies, and so they’re cool wings,” Runge said.

Before the program, 90 percent of girls were missing 4-5 days of school each month. That number is now down to three percent.

“Life was so, can I say, difficult, but when I got Wings Poas, the life became so much more comfortable, and I feel good,” Salome Musayoki, of Kenya, said. “I am very much, much grateful.”

The panty drive in Portsmouth delivered peace of mind halfway around the world.

“Just to realize the impact that our community here in New Hampshire is having on the community in Kenya was really powerful,” Burns said.

For now, the more than 5,000 pairs of underwear will be enough for the students in Wamunyu, but Burns said she is hopeful that this program will expand to help other rural communities around the world.

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