What she didn't see changed everything

How one Clarkson College faculty member is helping girls across East Africa stay in school through education, innovation, and empowerment.

She didn’t see any women.

Danna Swartz, assistant professor of General Education at Clarkson College, was in Ethiopia seven years ago, helping to install a computer lab at a college that teaches nursing and midwifery. “There were hardly any women anywhere on campus,” she says.

It was an unsettling observation she describes as a “lightning bolt” that led Swartz down an important and meaningful path in remote parts of East Africa, places where the U.S. State Department advises people not to visit.

She learned that when women in rural parts of South Sudan, Kenya, and Ethiopia were menstruating, they were homebound.

“Many young girls had to drop out of school,” she shares. “Or others that manage to stay in school, are years behind because they miss one week of school every month.”

It is a situation that has multiple factors, including a lack of education about what is happening during a woman’s menstrual cycle and little access to menstrual products.

Swartz was so moved by what she learned that she began developing a program called Pads for Pupils. Their focus is to provide education on women’s health while also teaching women the skills to stay in school. Using lightweight fabric, the volunteer group taught women how to sew reusable menstrual pads.

A child holding up a 3d printed educational model of a uterus. — A young Ethiopian woman holding an 3d-printed educational model of a uterus.

Members of the 3D Printing Team at Clarkson College.

The other key part of their effort was education. The group uses culturally appropriate curriculum and began teaching teenage students, both male and female, about a woman’s anatomy and reproduction.

“They are very familiar with the concept of birth,” Swartz says. “I simply present the basic science about how it happens.”

As she was preparing for her most recent trip this past August, Swartz approached her colleagues in the 3D Printing and Training Center at Clarkson College.

“I asked them if they could print a 3D model of a woman’s reproductive organs,” Swartz says.

Swartz used the model on her recent trip and found it very helpful.

Close-up of the resin 3D model of female reproductive organs printed at Clarkson College

“These concepts are so foreign to these students,” she says. “Having the model allowed my message to come across more clearly, and it generated a new level of curiosity among the students.”

Swartz left the 3D model in Ethiopia to help local volunteers educate more young people with this life-changing information.

“We were so excited to help,” says Trish Weber, director of Innovation Strategies, who oversees the 3D Printing and Training Center at Clarkson College. “We had all these ideas, but Danna really wanted to keep it simple.”

Weber and her team found a publicly available CT image of a woman’s reproductive organs on the Stanford Medicine website and used it to create a 3D model out of resin.

“Our goal is to remove the shame and mystery associated with a woman’s menstrual cycle,” she says. “It’s just an organ.”

The team has either traveled to or provided support for 10 trips in seven years to East Africa, with plans to return in December to train Community Health nurses who can reach even more students. She estimates the Pads for Pupils team has helped educate more than 3,000 students.

“We will go wherever we’re invited to go,” she says. “I’m so proud that our Clarkson College team can have an impact like this on the other side of the globe.”