ABOUT DAYS FOR GIRLS
Vision: Every girl and woman in the world with ready feasible access to quality sustainable hygiene and health education by 2022.
Our Mission: Days for Girls International is a grassroots 501(c)3 non-profit creating a more dignified, humane and sustainable world for girls through advocacy, reproductive health awareness, education and sustainable feminine hygiene -- because no girl should go without. Women and girls discover their potential and self-value, are equal participants and agents of social change and are given opportunities to thrive, grow and contribute to their community's betterment while ensuring quality sustainable feminine hygiene. Tens of thousands of volunteers and important Alliance partners work together to ensure access to culturally, physically and environmentally appropriate hygiene solutions around the globe.
Team: Click here to learn more about our team.
DfG At A Glance
DfG kits are serving in 100+ countries
720+ Total Global Chapters and Teams
Reached over 300,000 girls to date
Number of Guiness World Records held: 1*
Presence on 6 continents
Each kit gives girls 180 days over 3 years
* What Guiness world record do we hold? Most pair of underwear worn at once, of course! We're always looking for good ways to raise awareness. View it here.
Action Plan
Educate. Global volunteer network. Empower local leadership. Every girl in the world deserves education, safety, and dignity.
Days for Girls furthers this goal by helping girls who would otherwise go without to have access to quality sustainable feminine hygiene and awareness. We accomplish this through both direct distribution via our Chapters' volunteer efforts in partnership with many nonprofits and organizations. By raising awareness. By helping other organizations become part of our alliance in starting Days for Girls projects in the communities they serve in, and importantly, by helping impoverished communities start their own programs to supply kits and training. It's working! Now we are building in-country program local production responses that empower local leadership, supply and economic stimulus.
Days for Girls was founded in 2008, when Executive Director Celeste Mergens prepared to travel back to Kenya to continue working with orphanages and communities in the wake of great political and economic upset. One night she awoke with a burning question: “Have you asked what the girls are doing for feminine hygiene?” When she asked the assistant director of the orphanage she was working
with, the answer was shocking: “Nothing. They wait in their rooms.”
The conditions were cramped, unsanitary, and would leave girls without food and water for days unless someone brought it to them. Furthermore, sanitary products were available, but only if girls were willing to suffer sexual exploitation in exchange. This moment was the beginning of awareness to the vulnerability millions of women and girls face throughout the world every month, simply due to this basic biological function. These women and girls suffer in silence, due to cultural ideas and taboos surrounding this issue. Because of this, girls and women can feel that they are tainted, or fundamentally flawed or less in some way. Washable, quality hygiene kits and accompanying education changes all that. Join us.
