Alumna Takes Action and Inspires Change
Meet Emilia
Emilia Laine, a former camper (‘12 ‘13) and Camp counselor at CRS (‘18 ‘19), is an ambitious and inspirational young activist who has been raising awareness about women’s health and climate change in her own community.
In April 2018, Emilia and three friends launched a project called the Kuu Project. After successfully raising 2,000 Euros (a little over $2,000), they provided menstrual cups (under the sponsorship of a menstrual cup company called Lunette) and educational workshops about menstruation to students at the University of Nairobi, located in Kenya.
“If we educate university students about menstrual health rights and different ways of taking care of your periods, we can eventually help them take action in their own society. In June this year, I was organizing two workshops as part of the Finnish Embassy’s program during the Nairobi Innovation Week. In total, we got 55 participants to our workshops and with those students, we are currently running surveys about their user experience.”
“In Nairobi, we also donated some cups to a female prison. It was a very eye-opening experience because we got to donate menstrual cups to people who really needed them.”
This project also provided 90 menstrual cups to Fida International in Kenya, which organizes trainings and distributes donated cups to females who are imprisoned or homeless.
As some young women in various regions of Kenya lack access to menstrual health education and products, the Kuu project acknowledged this and took action. We are tremendously proud of Emilia’s project which has addressed this issue. The project promoted the empowerment of these female university students by teaching them to take control of their menstruation in healthy and safe manners, and to erase the shame out of menstruation.
Combating Climate Change
As the urgency to combat climate change increases, Emilia became motivated to support a campaign called Ilmastoveivi2019, which translates to “scoring a goal toward improving the climate,” or “successfully preventing climate change.” This volunteer-led campaign, founded by a student activist named Laura Kolehmainen, has over 300 volunteers courageously fighting against climate change by demanding the attention of Finnish leaders. They are calling for these leaders to take action and implement new policies under their role as President of the Council of the European Union. The main purpose of this campaign was to collect signatures to persuade these politicians. Emilia had the honor of working alongside Ilmastoveivi2019’s group of young leaders who are urging for changes and improvements that would correct the environmental wrongdoings of our current and past global leaders.
Emilia volunteered with this campaign during the Spring of 2019. She helped in contacting Finnish schools and visiting them to educate students (of mostly middle school and high school) about climate change. Along with other volunteers, she hung posters, presented creative power points, visual materials, facts, as well as provided a lesson template for teachers to continue educating students on climate change. Overall, the team of volunteers encouraged students to care about and to become active in fighting climate change.
Most recently, Emilia attended the Helsinki Climate event, which was partially organized by Ilmastoveivi2019. Individuals from various sectors: business, academia, politics, young activists from all over Europe, etc, gathered to discuss Finland’s path to becoming carbon neutral in 2035.
You Can Do It, Too!
Emilia highlights how one can build a project to create change. She finds importance in setting a goal, conducting sufficient research, and contacting people. She believes it is essential to create an action plan and to be very clear with the steps that are needed in order to achieve the goal.
“Although these kinds of projects can provide you a lot of professional experience and help to improve your résumé, at the end of the day, these projects are not about you. In order to succeed, you need to sacrifice a lot of your time and energy. This, I learned especially working with the menstrual cup initiative. We spent hundreds of hours on the project with no salary. But when I heard after our workshops how the Kenyan students had been able to empower themselves and talk more freely about menstruation, it was all worth it.”
Emilia is encouraging the CRS community to take action in their own communities to address issues they feel strongly about. This action can range from suggesting something to your town hall or local community, to organizing a collective group of activists to persuade the government.
“If we all just sacrifice a few hours from our week to something like that… it would make a great difference.”
We are very proud of Emilia’s courageous and inspiring impacts!