The sewing room at PLC Armidale on Saturday morning was, as organiser Meg Georkas had warned me, a controlled chaos of fabric, stitching, and cutting.
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Twenty-one women - from as far away as Inverell, Glen Innes, and Uralla - were wielding scissors, sewing, and sorting through piles of brightly coloured cloths.
They were making and packing feminine hygiene kits for girls in developing countries, where monthly periods often mean periods out of class.
The women are members of Days for Girls, a global organisation founded in 2008 that has helped nearly 500,000 girls in more than 100 countries to fully participate in everyday life.
The Armidale group was founded three years ago today, on March 25 2016, with the joint support of Armidale Central Rotary and the Zonta Club of Armidale. It is now an independent charity, led by Meg and Vicky Channon.
Over the last three years, it has distributed sent more than 500 kits to developing countries, and plans to send another 500 this year alone.
"For us," Meg said, "it's an opportunity in a first-world country to acknowledge and help girls in disadvantaged areas - whether through isolation, non-education, or cultural taboos - to become independent through their own hygiene care and knowledge."
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One in 10 Sub-Saharan African girls, 113 million Indian teenagers, and 30 per cent of rural Brazilian girls miss school each year, according to Days for Girls.
The kits give the girls those five days a month back; school absentee rates, the organisation claims, have dropped from 25 to 3 per cent in Kenya alone.
The Armidale group's 70 members hold regular sewing workshops twice a term, to make the drawstring bag; two stitched shields (which clip on around the underwear); and eight flannel liners, which look just like cloth, so don't cause any stigma when washed or dried. These last three to five years.
They also assemble the store-bought components: washcloth, knickers, a freezer-grade zip-lock bag (for carrying soiled products), and a small piece of soap.
Too often, Meg explained, girls use leaves, dirty cloths, rocks, or even cow manure to stem the blood flow. "Anything we can provide to give them that independence has got to help."
Based at PLC since last year, the Armidale group move to O'Connor next term. Earlier workshops were held at TAS and the Armidale Secondary College.
Bev Walls (Inverell Rotary) will take 150 kits to the remote Papua New Guinean village of Inonda in July. Locals, she said, do not have access to shops to buy sanitary pads, and lack facilities to dispose of them. (The new Inverell Days for Girls group holds its first workshop this weekend.)
The group also distributed 150 kits to Laos in January, and 30 kits to a Zambian orphanage last year.
The products need to be good quality, easily washable, camouflaging, stain-busting, and culturally appropriate.
The designs are fun and girly, Meg explained, with lots of floral and patchwork fabrics. "This might be the only thing these girls own that is purely theirs, so it needs to be pretty."
Some designs are forbidden: eyes, animals (taboo in African villages), pop art, weapons, and in Asia the colour yellow (symbolic in Buddhism).
The organisation is very strict on the quality, methods, and design of the kit; it is now in its 28th iteration, based on feedback.
Days for Girls' aims aren't just practical, though; they're also educational. When the kits are distributed, local medical practitioners or nurses teach the girls about how their body works, menstruation, reproduction (both female and male), and hygiene.
"Once you give them that understanding," Meg said, "they walk out knowing that what goes on in their body is natural, and it's not taboo, shameful, or embarrassing."
That knowledge, she believes, gives them the strength to deal with elements in their society that might make them vulnerable - such as child marriage, sex traffic, and slavery.
The program also reduces generational ignorance. Mothers, aunts, and grandmothers may have gone decades without knowing why they menstruate, or even how babies are made, purely relying on what men tell them.
"It's such a mysterious and culturally taboo subject, surrounded by stigma," Meg said. "Often this is the first time they've seen imagery of not even male bodies, but their own; it gives awareness of what their own body does, and is capable of."
The charity also opens up the discussion to the whole community; a separate workshop is held for men.
Armidale locals interested in joining the group can call Meg Georkas on 0408 357 377. They don't need to be able to sew, Meg reassures them.
The group also welcomes donations of material, or money to buy fabric, pants, and soap. $10 will supply one girl with a bag. Unusable fabrics are passed onto Boomerang Bags. A Deepwater member has also made a fund-raising quilt which will be raffled for Mother's Day.