HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

I’m back from Africa (it was a wonderful adventure) and now it’s time for a little Luna-update.

Thanks to your donations, about 50 U-Go Girl Kits were taken to girls in Uganda. They were a huge hit with the high school girls! I also brought some to a clinic at a resource centre in a village called Tekera. Because there weren’t enough kits to distribute to everybody (and there’s a huge demand!) I asked the craftswomen and tailors at the resource centre if they could make the pads themselves. We found some old scraps of material and, sure enough, 15 minutes later, a pad was made. The women will start producing pads for local school girls and women and will hopefully make a little money. Overall, the Luna experience was very empowering! U-go Girls! H

Here are some pictures:

With just 3 sleeps left I’d like to extend a HUGE thank you to all my friends, family and anonymous supporters. After 6 months of preparation I’m finally ready to go and couldn’t have done it without you! Thanks for the encouragement, the emotional and financial support, the advice, the donations towards my projects, for housing me during my 10 days of homelessness, etc, etc.

So off I go. And my life is about to change in ways I can’t even imagine.

*Keep an eye out for updates and contact information

A great song by India Arie.

My real life inspiration:

The wonderful ladies at Lunapads have officially made the U-Go Girl Kit product page live. The donations are rolling in, we’re on fire! Go team! They also posted a great little entry about me and my project on their blog so check it out! Another great big thanks to Lunapads for all their great work and for so kindly and generously donating Lunapanties to the project as well.

Now we’re making progress!

A very special thanks to Lunapads for setting up a product page for the U-Go Girl Kits (where the “U” stands for Uganda, of course). The ladies at Lunapads are fabulous supporters of girls’ education in Africa and are fabulous partners. Each kit purchased/donated will go directly to my suitcase and straight to the high school in Uganda from there. Personal delivery! Check it out!

Another great big thank you shout-out to the St. John’s College Outreach Committee for a generous donation that will allow us to buy 21 kits. That’s 21 girls who won’t miss school because of their periods. Amazing!

While I’m at it I’ll thank St. John’s College and the Outreach Committee once again for the super successful “Eat for Education in Uganda” BBQ fundraiser that we held in April. Together we raised $750 as a community donation. Here are a couple of pictures from the event:

The purpose of my trip to Uganda is two-fold.

The main reason I’m going is to do a volunteer teaching placement. I’ll be in a rural village in the Masaka District. Sans electricity. Sans running water. It’s definitely going to be an adventure!! Although the main language of the district is Luganda (Lu = language, so Ganda language), English is still the language of instruction, even now in postcolonial times. I’ll be teaching high school girls and likely will have some time in the primary school as well.

When I found out that the Language and Literacy Department at UBC (and a bunch of profs in the dept.) were strongly linked to the community, its schools, and its library through previous research, I decided to hop on the research train myself. My master’s research will be on digital literacies in rural libraries, specifically focusing on the e-granary, which contains upwards of 10 000 000 texts! (Much more info to come!)

A side project that I’ll be working on with Dr. Shelley Jones and Mr. Dan Ahimbisibwe involves tackling the issue of menstruation as a barrier to girls’ education in rural Africa. Because of a lack of access to effective hygiene products and sanitation facilities, girls in Uganda miss up to a week of school per month while they’re on their periods!! We’re hoping to introduce reusable cloth pads to the girls and a wonderful Vancouver based company called Lunapads will be helping us out. Stay tuned for more information – it’ll be exciting!!

I’ll be using this blog to update you all on the preparations for my upcoming trip to Uganda.

The biggest news of the week: I got my plane ticket! Holy moly, off she goes! I leave on September 1st (with a happy little layover in Dubai) and arrive on September 5th. It’s real now! No turning back.