Giving Back
We appreciate the power of the community that allows the Lamu Yoga Festival to thrive — it would not be a successful project otherwise. That is why we support local initiatives and give back to the beautiful community of Lamu island! The initiatives we have supported are Safari Doctors, Anidan, Shela Bright Girls Secondary school and the Lamu Yoga Community.
Each year Lamu Yoga Festival also donates disposable sanitary pads to Shela Bright Girls Secondary school, as most of the girls cannot afford buying them and therefore lack affordable and hygienic menstrual products
We have now expanded our scope to reach more girls within Lamu, and opted for the eco-friendly Reusable Sanitary Pads. Since 2020 we partnered with PadMad Social Enterprise and we managed to support more than 300 girls in 2020 with a package of Reusable sanitary pads, to ensure that no girl misses school during her period. PadMad Reusable pads are biodegradable, sustainable and long-lasting – up to 5 years – and produced locally in Kenya.
A month after our first Reusable Sanitary Pads distribution, we organised a focus group discussion with girls at the school to get their opinions. We chatted about their experiences with reusable pads and about Menstrual hygiene in general. All girls were very satisfied and said the pads are comfortable and beneficial. They gave us very valuable and detailed insight that inspired us to continue this project. In 2021, we reached more than 1000 girls in Lamu Island with the help of Banana House and Lamu Furaha.
This year, some of the proceeds of the festival ticket will go towards getting more Reusable pads and reaching out to more girls in Lamu and Manda Island. We aim on reaching out again to more than 1,000 girls by December 2022. To reach this goal, we are working closely with the schools in Lamu, and have made a distribution strategy that we believe will be effective.
Lamu Yoga Community
We believe yoga should be accessible to everyone, so we are proud to support free community yoga classes. Africa Yoga Project teacher Fred Gwance teaches yoga to local adults and children in Lamu Town and Shela. We now want to add another teacher who will solely work with the locals as the yoga community in Lamu is continuing to grow.
To help sustain the effort, we are using 250 KSH from each ticket toward supporting the teacher. With your help, we hope to fund the initiative constantly.
To support, you can choose to donate 500 KHS on your registration form. You can also leave your mats after the festival, or bring an extra one for the young local upcoming yogis.
For more information about our initiatives and about how you can support them, please send us an email to info@lamuyoga.org.
Asante sana!