Buggy Eakin has all the time been a traveler at coronary heart.
When she was simply 8 months outdated, her mother and father took her to the Netherlands. Throughout her youth, Eakin visited a number of nations with Washougal’s Woman Scout Troop 45703.
“All of the volunteering and the travel that I’ve done definitely made me want to go places,” stated Eakin, a 2024 Washougal Excessive Faculty graduate, including that she believes that “to help others, you need to be able to travel and see the world.”
For her closing Woman Scout venture, she created 1,000 washable and reusable menstruation pads that at the moment are headed to Ugandan villages. Eakin needed to do one thing that may assist her earn the Woman Scouts’ highest achievement, the Gold Award, whereas additionally benefiting women and girls on the opposite aspect of the world.
“I chose this project because in America we’re so privileged. We have our periods, we can go out, we can go to work, we can do everything,” Eakin stated. “A lot of the girls in Uganda, they can’t go to school if they’re on their period. They have to stay home because there’s nothing to do about it, so they just sit at home and bleed.”
Eakin stated she hopes her venture will assist no less than just a few Ugandan women have a greater life.
“I wanted to help them go to school and get an education and be successful,” she stated.
Eakin stated the award was significant.
“I just feel so accomplished,” she stated. “I did something that also creates an impact.”
Eakin labored in collaboration with OurGanda, a Vancouver nonprofit group that serves the medical, social and non secular wants of people that stay within the Bundibugyo District of western Uganda.
Throughout her talks with OurGanda, the group’s leaders advised Eakin they wanted reusable menstrual pads as a result of a trash assortment disaster in Uganda has made it almost unattainable for some individuals to simply eliminate the standard disposable pads used all over the world.
In response to The Borgen Mission, a nonprofit that works to battle excessive poverty, trash in Uganda “has been piling up for years in areas where waste management has been a struggle for locals.”
Eakin recruited almost a dozen associates, Woman Scouts and grownup mentors who volunteered to assist make the reusable pads. The group gathered at stitching events and used supplies bought with a few of the cash Eakin had earned promoting Woman Scout cookies, in addition to donations from Washougal-area companies and group members.
“I had to find a pattern first. We went through a lot of different patterns, and then we found a really good one and cut the fabric into the pattern,” Eakin stated. “We (covered) the fabric with some waterproof material and pieces of fleece, like a sandwich.”
Then the group positioned 5 reusable pads in handmade luggage. The group additionally mentioned and documented the historical past of female hygiene merchandise, chemical substances, dangers related to disposable menstrual merchandise and the stigma round intervals. They labored on the venture for somewhat multiple 12 months and completed making 1,000 reusable pads in September 2024.
Eakin had deliberate to ship the pads to Africa, however was working for AmeriCorps and couldn’t take two weeks off. As an alternative, she positioned the completed pads in suitcases and gave them to the OurGanda organizer, who introduced them to Uganda for distribution.
In a venture report, Eakin wrote that, though she enjoys serving to others, the venture taught her that she doesn’t get pleasure from stitching.
“I learned to appreciate the help of others and realized that, while I am responsible for my success or failure, it is important to have supporters along the way,” Eakin stated in her venture report.
Eakin joined AmeriCorps after graduating from highschool and at the moment works for a nonprofit day care heart in Colorado. She plans to return to Washougal this summer time to avoid wasting cash earlier than heading south to volunteer at a Woman Scout World Middle in Mexico. Eakin additionally hopes to affix the Peace Corps.
And he or she’ll be doing all of her touring within the faculty bus that she not too long ago bought.
“I’ve always wanted to live in a bus,” she stated. “I bought it on Facebook Marketplace. It’s a pink ‘skoolie,’ and it was already renovated, so I’ll be living in it.”
Eakin stated she loves the thought of by no means having to remain in a single spot and is wanting ahead to dwelling life on the street, “being able to go wherever I want, when I want.”
Washougal Woman Scout troop chief Tammy Mackey stated Eakin, who joined the Washougal troop when she was 5 years outdated, possesses a powerful sense of self, empathy, a way of journey, an “intense-at-times” persona, and a want to advocate for marginalized and underrepresented communities.
“To watch (Eakin) grow into the young woman she is today has been quite the adventure,” Mackey stated. “She is definitely a woman of courage, confidence and character. Of all of my Girl Scouts, I have no doubt (she) will continue to cause others to shake their heads in bewilderment as she lives life to the fullest, breaking barriers and doing exactly as she pleases with little concern for the ‘tsk-tsking’ of others.”
