– Helping to address period poverty in Guyana

ARIEANNA Madray has been no stranger to volunteerism in her effort to lend a helping hand wherever she could, so when she realised what a sore issue period poverty is in Guyana, especially in rural areas, she felt a natural need to do something about it.

She couldn’t just sit around and do nothing, she’d reflect in an interview with Pepperpot Magazine, and things just fell into place for her so that at just 19 years old, she was able to start The Avyanna Foundation which has a focus on helping girls and educating them on menstrual hygiene.

Already one year in the works, Arieanna is working towards getting the foundation registered and has already managed to rake in about 30 members, all volunteers who’d sometimes hold fundraisers to come up with the money to buy what the girls need.

When she started, though, Arieanna would use her funds to carry out the foundation’s work, perhaps due to her love and passion for helping those in need.

As a final year student at the University of Guyana (UG) who’d go on to secure her degree in Entrepreneurship, Arieanna was doing a project on menstrual hygiene which involved coming up with a business to help a social problem. She chose period poverty.

“After doing the research, I found out that Guyana has a very real period poverty issue and there are a lot of girls in the rural locations who are suffering; they have not been able to get sanitary pads and even education on menstrual hygiene,” Arieanna recalled.

So, in the beginning, the foundation was initially to help girls in rural areas and given her entrepreneurial background, she thought she’d also be able to teach them some business skills. Now, the foundation also reaches out to orphanages and girls in other settings who need help.

“When we go to these places, we would do little workshops with the girls because I value the importance of education and I feel like we need to help empower these young girls. So the foundation is not only to provide sanitary pads, but to help these young girls become independent and to empower them through education and information,” she shared.

As a future plan, she wants to begin conducting entrepreneurial classes with women who were abused or who may have suffered other ills; and if they have a business idea, help them to get it going.

She also wants the foundation to be able to collaborate with different organisations so that it can be part of more and grander initiatives to help. Because funds are limited at the moment, Arieanna and her team would try to establish a relationship with people in various locations across the country so that they can send the items and have the people there help to distribute them.

Arieanna wants to move the organisation forward with a strong team. “I want a team that is as devoted and passionate about this social issue. I want to be able to say we made an impact and we are helping.”

Even before she started the foundation, she would help people on her own and conducting the menstrual hygiene survey at Rockstone and reviewing the responses motivated her to do more in volunteerism. “The survey allowed persons to tell me their experience. Some girls said they use socks; that they didn’t know why this happened to their bodies. Hearing things like these broke my heart; I couldn’t sit around and not do anything about it and doing the research, I saw how it affected the young girls,” Arieanna reflected.

“I feel like if I should help somebody, even as little as I can, I should do it. I want to help girls in rural areas. I just want to be able to help as much as I can in the future,” she said.