老司机传媒

Nilah Mataafa (junior, accounting) heads the Phoenicia Finesse organization, which provides sustainable menstrual supplies to Syrian refugee women, alongside her sister Nara and friend Anna Cousins.

Can you tell us a little bit about your organization?
We started out as a thrifting organization where we would sell clothes online and then donate all the profits to help women in Lebanon. My sister lives in Lebanon, goes to school there and works for the Union over there so she has this passion for helping the Syrian refugee women there. She noticed that a lot of refugees do not have working rights and are unable to get a job. A lot of the women there can't work to help their families because of the Bay Route Blast and the whole economic crisis and inflation that's happening over there. A lot of people aren’t able to afford simple menstrual products, and so these women are having to use very unsanitary methods. We decided to do a little bit of  research and found some reusable menstrual items that are available here. We wanted to give back by helping integrate a system where women over there can work and get paid for distributing these reusable items to other women there. We're strictly run on a donation basis now and a lot of churches have helped us by providing the resources with either funding, or the fabric to make the pads that we've sent off to Lebanon. We’ve even partnered with someone from the UK to try and get this patent on one of her products that she's made to help women wash the reusable pads at home. So things are happening, and we wanted it to move forward and just continue to expand.

What are some of your personal motivations for getting involved in starting this organization?
I would say my sister, because it was definitely something that she was really passionate about. And then I happened to meet Anna Cousins, who goes to Southern, and she's super passionate about this too. She’s so artistic and really good at graphic design, and she was really the glue that held us together. I want to make some kind of difference and since I'm an accounting major, I want to be able to apply some business skills and use some of the knowledge and talents that I have, to help other people. I feel like something that can be self-sustainable is something useful and can be considered a project to better people's lives, especially if you're in a place where you have so much privilege. You should be able to give back and improve society, so that's my motivation.

Do you have any long term goals with this project?
Well, I have seen a lot of mission trips where you go there, build a house and then you leave.  I feel like you can't just pop in and leave a week later. With this, we’re really trying to help the communities become self-sustaining. So far we have all the operations but we would like a consistent cash flow. We have plans to sell some of the goods that they make to other nonprofits or organizations so that it can sustain itself. We want the women in Lebanon to be able to sell it themselves and be able to make a profit.

What can Andrews students do to help?
Right now we need something practical. A lot of churches have been able to help out with this by donating material because that's the expensive part. So I hope we can get people to donate towards a certain material called zorb, which is the absorbent part of the pad; they also use it in things like hospital beds. And then I'll ship it over to Lebanon. If they're willing to just donate, that'd be awesome and it’s definitely something that would be really helpful. Also just to spread the word about it! We have a social media page () if they want to share or learn a little bit more about us. And also we're trying to get a provisional patent so if anybody knows anyone that knows how to write up a contract for that, that would be helpful too.

Students can donate at:

Raw material can be purchased and donated to the address below, using the sites listed:

Address:
Phoenicia Finesse
6001 Verner Ave.
Sacramento, CA 95841