Kooyrigs Delivers Menstrual Products and Medication Amid Lebanon’s Recent Crisis

Kooyrigs teamed up with Jeyetik and Joumana Haddad’s Freedoms Center, two local feminist organizations, to distribute pads and ibuprofen to some of the most vulnerable groups of women. Joumana Haddad’s Freedoms Center has been working to organize Lebanese youth and advocate for human rights, secularism, equality, and inclusion since 2019. Although their in-person activities have been interrupted by the current crisis, they worked to help connect Kooyrigs with other organizations, and donated their space for aid distribution.

The Trip

Two members of the team, I and Maria Kjdrian, traveled to Lebanon to assess the situation, and personally distribute our aid. We met with Maryam Skaf, the founder of Jeyetik, and with her help traveled to three shelters for victims of domestic violence. Skaf talked to us about her founding of Jeyetik in 2020, when the government decided to leave pads and other period products off the list of essential items that they subsidized after the explosion. This reflects a lack of consideration for women’s basic needs by a system run by men, and a disregard of the effects of period poverty. These can include infections due to poor period hygiene, which, in a country with a crisis of medication availability, can become even more serious. In response, Skaf launched Jeyetik as an initiative to make period products accessible to all.

Kooyrigs distributed aid to three different shelters, which we chose specifically because of the shelter and support they provide to survivors in critical condition, and their policies of serving everyone without discrimination by ethnicity, religion, sect, or political party, which can be an issue in some organizations. Kooyrigs sourced pads and medications from Armenia, ordering from a family-owned pharmacy in Jrvezh in order to support the local economy. Due to the difficulty of bringing medications from Armenia to Lebanon, the organization focused on non-prescription shelf medications.

The first shelter we delivered to was the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) of Lebanon. Although this shelter began as a Christian organization, their board comprises members of multiple groups and religions, and they serve any women regardless of their background. This shelter is kept private, and serves women in the most critical condition of domestic violence, generally those who have been severely physically abused, and have run away from their partners. We spent very little time at the shelter itself to protect the safety and privacy of the beneficiaries, and the shelter’s staff distributed the period products and medication to their beneficiaries.

The second organization we visited was the Lebanese Women’s Democratic Gathering (RDFL). This organization combines political advocacy and direct aid. As part of their advocacy work, RDFL is currently working on a campaign to advocate for a law that would make the legal age of marriage 18 for all people in Lebanon, regardless of sect or religion. In addition, they operate three shelters in different areas of Lebanon for survivors of domestic violence. We distributed our period products to their main center in Beirut, and the organization workers distributed them to the three shelters.