Decolonizing Menstrual Health - A Multidisciplinary Exploration

This event will happen in person at BIWOC Rising. Accessibility information about the space is available on their website. Please contact us if you have access requirements: we want this event to be as accessible as possible to everyone.

Please note that food and drinks will not be provided. We advise you to eat before or after the event and/or to bring your own snacks and drinks for the event.

Menstrual Hygiene Day (May 28th) was created by Berlin-based NGO WASH United as a way to raise awareness of the importance of good menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) and to break the taboos surrounding menstruation worldwide.

But what if there’s more to the story? What if what is perceived as period stigma is simply another way to think about periods? What if "good MHH management" looks different for each of us?

Western colonial legacies still deeply shape the way we perceive, talk about, and manage our cycles, 
from how menstrual health is taught via Eurocentric frameworks to the tech we use to track our cycles, and the narratives that shape "hormonal balance",  female health, and menstruating bodies in general.

This May 28th, we want to bring together community, conversation, and creativity for a 3-hour decolonial journey to reclaim agency over our cycles.

Program:

• 18:30-19:00: Welcome and introduction
• 19:00-20:30: Knowledge sharing and discussion in small groups via 3 exploration stations:
  • Lucie's station: Colonial Patterns in Period Tracker Apps and How to Break Them
    
  • Danielle's station: Decolonizing Menstrual Health Education & Reviving Rites of Passage
    
  • Diahala's station: Menstruation, Magic & Memory in Fiction by Non-White Authors
    
• 20:30-21:30: Zine workshop

We will digitalize and send the Zine to all participants after the event and donate 25% of the ticket sales to Berlin-based menstrual education organization YesWeBleed.

About the facilitators:

Lucie Le Naour (all pronouns)

Lucie is a queer, genderfluid, and neurodivergent freelance content designer helping small social impact businesses, non-profits, and open source projects get the visibility they deserve. In their spare time they love to kickbox, read anarchist literature, and just think about how to dismantle capitalism and its associated systems of oppression and extraction. Decolonizing tech is a big part of it.

More about Lucie: https://www.lucie-l.com/

Danielle Keiser (she/her)

Danielle Keiser is the Queen of Menstrual Health: A trailblazer, a consultant, a coach, a facilitator, an educator and an exited founder. Since 2013, she has worked to break the silence around menstruation by helping launch Menstrual Hygiene Day (28 May), founding the global nonprofit, Menstrual Health Hub, and co-authoring the official definition of menstrual health. Danielle has consulted UNICEF, Johnson & Johnson, Essity, The Body Shop, Flo, Soundcloud and the Wikimedia Foundation on all aspects of menstrual health, ranging from innovation to social impact to campaigns. As a consultant, she helps companies foster more gender-equitable workplaces or understand menstrual health, and as a coach she helps women holistically improve their menstrual cycle challenges and prepare for menopause.

More about Danielle: https://dani-health.com/

Diahala Doucouré (she/her)

Diahala is a freelance content strategist helping healthcare companies create content that actually makes sense across cultures, languages and lived experiences. After several years spent in the tech world, she made the leap into women’s and sexual health, a space where research is still catching up, but innovation moves fast (sometimes too fast!). She also co-hosts the Sassy Book Club, an online space where we read fiction and nonfiction on identity, bodies or migration.

More about Diahala: https://www.dcontentstrategy.com/