HAMAMAS MERI
Happy Women. Strong Communities. Led From Within.
Hamamas Meri means “happy women” in Tok Pisin.
But it means something else too.
It means women in remote PNG communities identifying a problem, owning the solution, and building something that outlasts any outside programme. It means grassroots change — quiet, practical, and real.
The Problem No One Talks About
Menstruation affects half the population of PNG. It shapes whether girls go to school, whether women participate in community life, whether families thrive.
And it’s still taboo.
In remote Manus Province, store-bought sanitary products are unaffordable, inaccessible, and routinely treated as a luxury — the last item on the list after every other family need is met. When toilet paper, rags and newspaper are the only options, girls stay home. They miss school. They fall behind. The ripple effect reaches entire communities.
This is not a small problem. It is a hidden one.
And the women of Manus Province have known it long before anyone from the outside thought to ask.
We Didn’t Arrive With Answers
Wantaim PNG has worked in Manus Province since 2007. In that time we’ve learned one thing above all others:
The most powerful solutions come from within.
We don’t parachute in with programmes designed elsewhere and delivered top-down. We sit alongside local women’s groups and community leaders — people who carry the lived experience of these challenges — and we ask: what would help, and how do we build it together?
Hamamas Meri was born from exactly those conversations.
The Solution Women Built
Wantaim PNG doesn’t believe in handouts. Free goods are easy to deliver and rarely build anything lasting — and they position women as recipients rather than leaders.
Hamamas Meri is built differently.
Working alongside existing village women’s groups — women who already hold trust within their communities and already want change — the programme provides training across three areas:
- Production — making reusable, affordable sanitary kits
- Hygiene education — building knowledge and breaking down stigma
- Marketing — selling kits within their community and generating income
Women don’t just solve the problem for themselves. They build a small enterprise. They train others. They become the people their community turns to.
No outside experts. No dependency. No programme that collapses the moment Wantaim PNG steps back.
Just women leading women. From the inside out.
What Happens Next Is The Point
When women lead their own solutions, the impact doesn’t stop at sanitary products. Girls stay in school. Incomes grow. Women’s standing in community life strengthens. Confidence builds. And the women who started as participants become trainers — extending the reach of the programme into communities we have never directly touched.
This is what grassroots change looks like. It doesn’t arrive with a press release. It happens in community halls and under trees and around sewing machines — led by women who decided that enough was enough.
Hamamas Meri contributes to 10 of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals — including education,
gender equality, economic empowerment, and community wellbeing. Not because it was designed around
a framework, but because when you back women to lead, the outcomes are that broad.
What We’ve Built Together
Since 2017:
- 54 women trained in kit sewing
- 179 women engaging with the kit sewing and assembly
- 170 women attended sewing machine workshop
- 2150 people attended awareness training on sexual health hygiene
- 11 communities reached across Manus Province
- Reusable sanitary kits produced and sold by the women themselves
- A growing network of locally led trainers carrying the programme forward
The programme is still running. Still growing. Still led by the women who built it.
The Honest Version
Wantaim PNG is not the hero of this story.
The women of Manus Province are.
We provided training, resources, and a framework. They provided the knowledge, the trust, the leadership,
and the will to make it work. In community after community, women who had every reason to wait for
someone else to fix this decided not to.
That’s not a programme outcome. That’s who these women are.
Our job is simply to back them.
Back Women Who Are Already Leading
Your support funds training, materials, and the conditions for the next community of women ready to build their own solution.
Not charity. Partnership.