Our Crowdfunding Groups
Who are we?
We are a group of engineering students enrolled in a class that allows us to apply our knowledge and skills to humanitarian issues around the world. This year, we are improving upon a previous UT project to create a device that will fabricate feminine hygiene products for Syrian women in refugee camps in Lebanon. There are currently about 300,000 Syrian women living in Lebanese refugee camps and only 12,000 of them receive menstrual hygiene aid. Our goal is to create a device that can fabricate low-cost pads efficiently and effectively. This device will be sent to the Lebanese Red Cross to be used in refugee camps, helping to bring confidence to all these incredible women. It will also provide a source of income for the women who operate the machine! We have so many ideas we are excited to implement but we need your help to reach our goal!
The Design Process
The project started a couple years ago as a senior design project for UT mechanical engineering students. The project was then handed off to another UT student team called Hygiene, Empowerment, and Research for Social Impact (HERS team) who traveled to Beirut, Lebanon in the summer of 2018 to test their device and pads.
The senior design team made the first prototype of the device called "Priscilla" which featured a design inspired by a panini press. All designs afterwards have continued along this idea of a heat press than can press sanitary pads from layers of material. The HERS team made the next two prototypes of the design called "Gertrude 1" and "Gertrude 2" which look similar to Priscilla, but include the ability to fabricate more pads per batch and the ability to add wings to the pads. During their time in Beirut, the HERS team collaborated with the Lebanese Red Cross (LRC) and students from the Lebanese American University (LAU) to get feedback regarding the pads from the women in the settlements and improve on the design of the device. We are so excited to use feedback from the surveys and continue our partnership with LAU to keep up the good work!
HERS team member in Lebanon conducting fabrication training for LRC!
While we have yet to name our future prototypes, this year we will design and build 3 prototypes, each better than the last! Previous iterations had problems with the pads not being fully sealed and ready to use after fabrication. We hope to fix this issue and make the prototype work at a faster rate so that the machine is fully functional when it is sent to Lebanon.
How YOU can help
Prototyping is an intensive process. Your donation will allows us to purchase materials to test and fabricate pads. It will help us test new features to improve on previous designs to be more efficient, durable, and easy-to-use so it can reliably fabricate sanitary pads for refugee women and provide them with jobs. This project would not be possible without you so thank you for helping us change the world!
Our goal is to create pads at about 5 cents per piece. By donating $25 we will be able to buy enough materials to create 500 pads.
At 5 cents per pad, this would be enough to buy material to fabricate 1000 pads for women in refugee camps.
96% of Syrian women in Lebanese refugee camps have not received menstrual hygiene aid.
This will support a year's supply of pads for fifteen refugee women!
The second prototype ever made, Gertrude 1, cost around $500 so this would help us build a whole new prototype!
Fun fact: November 22, 1943 is Lebanese Independence Day! Celebrate with us by donating!
Fun fact: The Mount Lebanon range spans almost all of Lebanon with an average elevation of 2500 meters.
