A few weeks ago, I shared with you a very special podcast episode with my own mid-wife (twice over), Jennifer Braun.
The episode highlighted her direct experience in Afghanistan, her midwifery organization (IMA – International Midwife Assistance), and the midwifery schools and clinics she set up in Afghanistan where the country's maternal mortality ratio was the highest in the world. Her mission was training women to support women in safe and healthy child birth and postpartum care.
Women in many developing nations lack basic health care and face life-debilitating and life-threatening health issues and there are also places in our own backyard that need our attention.
With the state of the world unfolding as it is, it feels so imperative for me to pivot a bit (at times) and shift our conversation to some of the planets desperate global women's health crises.
So why underwear (and hijabs)?
After talking with my client, Taylor Patrice, I learned that the most needed items in the German Afghan refugee camps she is working in are underwear, feminine hygiene products and hijabs.
It turns out, we often overlook donating these intimate items. We do this because we don’t donate used underwear. We donate jeans that no longer fit and sweaters that went out of style. Because we don’t add underwear to the donate pile from the contents of our closets, they often aren't made available to shelters.
That said, this issue does not lie merely in the fact that people need bloomers. While these items are not only significant to their comprehensive health, they also play a crucial role in the physical and sexual safety of refugees.
Hijabs too? Yes hijabs too. This is where cultural understanding and nuance comes into play.
If you want to learn more about women and children’s comprehensive health issues as they relate to displacement, and how we can help all the new neighbors we will be gaining stateside from Afghanistan before the end of the year, be sure to listen to today’s episode of SATIATE
This is to remind us all that WE can make a difference in our world (big or small). Be sure to read on (and listen) for inspiration and hope:
Listen and hear:
A real-time snap shot of what is actually happening with Afghan refugee people (specifically women and children) displaced to Germany.
What is the Allies Refuge Mission.
What it is like for Taylor to be hand delivering clean underwear, feminine hygiene products and hijabs (and other things) to Afghan women in the refugee camps in Germany multiple times a week.
What these Afghan women are going through, what they need and how we can help.
An opportunity to donate directly to this mission where your support will go towards helping all of the new neighbors we will be gaining stateside from Afghanistan before the end of the year,
MEET TAYLOR PATRICE:
Taylor Patrice is the writer and podcaster behind Policy Out Loud.
It’s her mission to make Policy Out Loud a platform that makes the language around domestic and foreign policy more accessible to people who are passionate about the world around them. She strives to reduce the gap between research and the policy-making process, and people.
Policy, one of the greatest forces in our everyday lives, is often created quietly and out of view. Taylor’s goal to change this by creating a platform committed to unpacking the complex role policy plays in creating, fortifying and/or dismantling the systems around us.
Her blog is dedicated to unpacking social, political, and economic issues as they relate to policy from both regional and global perspectives.
Taylor’s life has afforded her the ability to live and work in different corners of the world. These vantage points have included the inside of lockdown facilities, in courtrooms and church pews, in graveyards and soup-kitchen lines; the places where the lowest levels of policy take on names and faces and heartbeats. She is passionate about this work because she has seen first hand how real world problems + real world policy can affect very real people.
It is her hope that this continues to be your go-to resource for all things policy, year after year.
You can find out all about Taylor and her work HERE
To Donate to Allies Refuge –– HELPING HANDS FOR EVACUEES –– click the button below