The collaboration has already included a workshop on menstruation, given by Marisa Guillen in the framework of a cooperation project funded by the UV in the VI Call for Development Cooperation Projects and the celebration of the “Day of Women and Girls in Science” in Sodo Georgis primary school in Wolaita Sodo (Ethiopia).

Tuesday’s session starts at 3.30pm with the presentation ceremony. Between 4 and 5.15 p.m., a first round table will take place in which the biological aspects and social and cultural determinants of the menstrual cycle will be analysed and the role of the University of Valencia in its knowledge. Andrea Muñoz, graduate in Human Nutrition and Dietetics; Yolanda Morant, psychiatrist and expert in Sexology and Couples Therapy; and Laura Fuentes, PhD assistant professor at the Faculty of Physiotherapy, will speak.

Between 5.45 p.m. and 7 p.m., the day will discuss the cooperation’s view of menstrual health in other contexts and the role of UV in them, with the participation of María Trelis, full professor of Parasitology; María Escalona, Menstrual Educator and Social Educator; and Amparo Oliver, professor of Behavioural Sciences Methodology at UV.

Marisa Guillen highlights the objectives of the program: “Women’s health in Ethiopia, and specifically menstrual health, is an issue that requires more attention from the point of view of cooperation because it requires facing not only the lack of human or economic resources but to the presence of taboos or ideas present in these societies (and also surprisingly in ours). Multidisciplinary collaboration is necessary to cover all aspects and thus improve the health of the community through the resources that can be used by women”.

Among other proposals, Cardona and Guillén propose within this project to make a comicbook explaining the topic of menstruation, in English and Amharic (the official language of Ethiopia), and to translate a card game on the formulation of chemical compounds that a group of innovation of the Faculty of Chemistry and edited the Publications Service of the UV, both financed by the UNESCO Chair.

Luz Cardona points out that the ETHIOPIANGIRLS4SCIENCE project “was born with the objective of promoting interest in science among Ethiopian girls and young women after many years of working in the educational area in Ethiopia and seeing the situation of women in the country”. In this sense, taking advantage of the fact that the last cooperation projects of the UV have had as a local partner the University of Wolaita Sodo, “we would like to promote an interdisciplinary collaboration and educational innovation between both universities, so that the teaching staff of the Ethiopian coordinate the dissemination of the material between primary schools and institutes using the service-learning methodology. In this way, the three educational levels will be interrelated”, completes Cardona.

This multidisciplinary cooperation project will be submitted to the next calls for projects to receive enough funding and be able to carry it out with adequate resources.

You can register for the session by clicking here.

Program of the day.

Annex photo captions: Marisa Guillén (left) and Luz Cardona (right), and several activities in Sodo Georgis primary school in Wolaita Sodo (Ethiopia). These are a contest of draws and the celebration of the Day of Women and Girls in Science.