Dozens of Black women in Philly gather weekly to sew reusable period pads for girls in Africa and beyond

It is a humble space, this center for an international health initiative that takes place from a concrete hilltop in North Philadelphia.

Fueled by Black women, sewing machines, and a mission, members of the Pan-African Sisterhood Health Initiative, or P.A.S.H.I., gather every Wednesday at the Ujima Friends Peace Center.

There, they make reusable, washable, cotton menstruation pads for girls and women in Africa and the Caribbean.

Somewhere between 25 to 35 Black women — joined by one white woman and one Black man — come together each week at the Black-led Quaker center.

“We don’t call it period poverty, we call it menstrual hygiene management,” Maisha Sullivan-Ongoza, one of the founders, said about the project. “We use 100% cotton fabric. We researched and found a commercial product called Zorb, a 100% compressed cotton that absorbs liquid that is seven to eight times its weight. Then we used a laminated cotton material as the water-resistant layer.”

The pads can be used for three years with proper care and washing. She said commercially packaged pads are used once and thrown away. But many are made with so-called “forever chemicals” that can have negative health consequences.

“I just love the impact it’s having. They’re not using something that’s unhealthy. They are not open to [sexual] predators taking advantage of them [in exchange for buying pads]. They have something so they can manage their periods with dignity.”

In November 2023, nine P.A.S.H.I. members traveled to Zimbabwe for an international conference on how artists can use their art for social transformation. Sullivan-Ongoza was the keynote speaker.

“I focused on self-sufficiency, because that’s how we started,” she said of her talk in Zimbabwe. “We started small, with no funding. Just goodwill. We became our own resource development. Our resources were our own good intentions.”

The group spent two weeks traveling around Zimbabwe to teach women how to make reusable pads by hand.

P.A.S.H.I. began in 2019, initially as a project of the Sankofa Artisans Guild, a group that includes quilt-makers, woodworkers, jewelry makers, and other artists and crafts people. Not all members of the guild are members of P.A.S.H.I., and not all P.A.S.H.I. volunteers are members of the guild.

The Sankofa Artisans Guild came to prominence in 2022, when members created quilts for a display at Philadelphia City Hall called Dreams of Freedom, to honor the 200th anniversary of Harriet Tubman’s birth.

“We started small, with no funding. Just goodwill.”

For years, Sullivan-Ongoza said, the guild took on a social justice project each year. As part of that mission, the group always brought or sent school supplies to a school in The Gambia. In 2019, school administrators told them there was a special need for pads for the female students.

“They told us that that girls often missed school for days when they had their periods. And if they stained their clothing while at school, they were teased and bullied,” Sullivan-Ongoza said.

In September 2019, a 14-year-old girl in Kenya committed suicide after being “period shamed” for staining her school uniform. That, Sullivan-Ongoza said, is when she knew she and the quilt-makers had to use their skills to sew reusable pads.

Most of the volunteers are retired women. They are, or were, teachers, executives, nurses, health administrators, social workers, a medical doctor, an environmental professional, college professors, an accomplished poet, artists, and quilt-makers.

Gloria ”GG” Greer, 76, a retired Eastern Airlines software sales manager, is a quilt-maker who regularly shows her quilts in exhibitions.

One day, while Greer was sewing the pouches that will contain the pads, she noted that the women’s accomplishments extend to the next generation: “Both of my daughters are doctors.” One daughter is a university professor with a Ph.D. in political science; the other is a medical doctor and professor.

Pheralyn Dove, a Philadelphia poet, is also a regular volunteer. She has honed a career performing her poetry as “Lady Dove,” accompanying jazz musicians. But Dove’s volunteer work is part of a family affair. She and her sister Stephanie Dove, who drives from Wilmington, and a cousin, Dorotheia Hilton, who lives in Newark, Del., all volunteer together.

Jacki Wilkins, 69, is a retired sustainability program manager for the Massachusetts Port Authority, whose job was to reduce harm to the environment.

“They are all my friends now, and it’s a really strong sisterhood.”

“Once I learned they make pads for girls who need them, it was an opportunity to start sewing again. … It gives me purpose. It’s a way for me to do something that matters.”

Wilkins now comes to the Ujima center on Wednesdays and Thursdays. The Sankofa Artisans Guild meets there on Thursdays, and she is learning to make quilts.

“I look forward to it. It’s a very diverse group. Their stories are all very different. They are all my friends now, and it’s a really strong sisterhood.”

Gail Hoffman, a sales agent for New York Life Insurance for 40 years, found P.A.S.H.I. on Facebook while looking up information on reusable menstrual pads two years ago. She has been volunteering ever since.

“I felt welcome from day one,” said Hoffman, aproject director for the Uganda Mission Project. The project is part of a nonprofit called Faith Equals Work that travels to Uganda every February. The mission repairs water pumps that provide clean water.

Some of the Uganda project members come to P.A.S.H.I. every other Wednesday to help to sew the pads and take them to Uganda every year.

The Uganda project members meet on Thursdays at a Germantown church to sew “pillowcase dresses” for girls there. They take the pads, along with the dresses, to Uganda every February. Their next trip is Feb. 15, she said.

Lynda Black, a fiber artist, said of the group: “They are extremely resourceful. I enjoy the camaraderie and also the mission. I enjoy supporting my community.”

“I enjoy the camaraderie and also the mission. I enjoy supporting my community.”

As they enter the Ujima offices, the women who sew take their machines — they are individually labeled with their names on them — down from shelves and set up at long tables to begin stitching.

There is quiet chatting; however, the mood is mostly businesslike. The socializing takes place when people share the dishes they brought for lunch.

For most of the day, each person has a specific role. Those who don’t sew have other tasks: Some cut fabric to make the “wings,” which are butterfly-shaped swaths of material onto which Zorb pads are stitched.

Others iron the completed wings before the pads are inserted. Some specialize in using a machine to fasten snaps onto the wings’ flaps so the entire pad can be folded into a 2-inch-square size that can be stored in a colorful pouch.

Some women only sew the pouches that store the pads. The pouches are cloth clutches that can be tucked away in book bags or purses.

On one wall of the large room where the women sit in front of their sewing machines is a small, colorful map of Africa with pins in the different countries where P.A.S.H.I. has distributed pads.

There is also a small whiteboard that notes “Shipments Pending.” The list of pending shipments on a recent day included Benin and Cuba in November, Haiti and Ghana in December, Tanzania in January, and Uganda in February.

Philadelphia-born educators Tahiya Nyahuma and Mujahid Nyahuma operate a program called Healthlink International that takes pads to Senegal every year.

Other organizations and schools such as Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter and Imhotep Charter High School also take pads to Africa each year.

For the last three years, Mandela Washington Fellows, young leaders in African countries who visit the United States every summer at U.S. universities, have also visited the P.A.S.H.I. workspace.

The Mandela Fellowship is a program of the U.S. government’s Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI).

Groups of about 25 fellows, ranging from 25 to 35, stay at universities for six weeks. They study professional development in either: business, civic engagement, or public management.

Last summer, two groups of Mandela Fellows, one from Drexel University and another from the University of Delaware, had separate sessions with P.A.S.H.I. where they were shown how to make hand-sewn pads.

One of the first Mandela Fellows who visited P.A.S.H.I. two years ago has started her own business producing reusable pads in her home country, Sullivan-Ongoza said.

One of the Mandela Fellows who visited last summer returned a few months later in the fall.

Ayodele Ognin, 34, from Benin, used the certificate that P.A.S.H.I. gave all of the fellows last summer and used it to applied for a Canadian fellowship and returned to Philadelphia for three weeks in November.

“She wrote to the foundation that if she could learn so much in her one day at P.A.S.H.I. during the summer, she was sure she could learn even more if she could return to spend more time with us,” Sullivan-Ogoza said.

The fellowship not only provided her airfare and lodging during her stay, but also provided money to buy a sewing machine to take back to Benin.

Ognin said she works for an organization in the city of Savè, Benin, that helps people learn financial literacy. She said she hopes to teach other women how to make pads.

Every year, Sankofa Freedom Academy Charter School and Imhotep Institute Charter High School has been sending groups of six or seven students to P.A.S.H.I. to learn how to make the pads. Most of the students are girls, but sometimes boys come, too.

The students spend about six to eight weeks learning to make pads. When The Inquirer visited one week, girls from Sankofa Freedom Academy were in their second week of using sewing machines. Some had completed small pincushions.

By the next week, several of the girls had completed making pads.

“It’s very exciting” to work at the center, said Samantha Stevens, 13.

The girls often would take a piece they were working on to show their work to “Mama Maisha.” Sullivan-Ongoza reminded them to make a small snip in the wings so that it can be more easily turned inside out.

One Wednesday, as the girls waved goodbye to Sullivan-Ongoza and headed toward the door, “Mama Maisha” called them back into the workspace. They all went back in and came out again with empty water bottles that they placed in a recycling bin.

Sullivan-Ongoza said people can support P.A.S.H.I. at ujimafriends.org/donate and specifying that the gift is for P.A.S.H.I.

This story was updated to correct the name of a student in a photo, it is Kyiah Coleman.