Women crick­eters com­pet­ed with a greater sense of com­fort this week dur­ing the Crick­et West In­dies (CWI) Un­der-19 Ris­ing Stars Tour­na­ment held here in T&T, thanks to the san­i­tary prod­ucts ini­tia­tive led by the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) St Au­gus­tine Acad­e­my of Sport in col­lab­o­ra­tion with T&T Women's Crick­et As­so­ci­a­tion (TTWCA) and part­ner­ing with Fem­i­nitt, a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion (NGO).

The first-time project to pro­vide fem­i­nine hy­giene items in the dress­ing rooms at the three venues for this year's U-19 tour­na­ment which con­clud­ed on Sat­ur­day (Ju­ly 13), was launched dur­ing last Sat­ur­day's (Ju­ly 6) sec­ond-round match be­tween T&T and Lee­ward Is­lands at the Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al Ground at the UWI Sport and Phys­i­cal Ed­u­ca­tion Cen­tre (UWI SPEC) in St Au­gus­tine.

The oth­er venues used dur­ing the com­pe­ti­tion, which al­so fea­tured teams from Guyana, Ja­maica, the Wind­ward Is­lands, and Bar­ba­dos, were the Bri­an Lara Crick­et Acad­e­my (BLCA) in Tarou­ba, San Fer­nan­do and the Diego Mar­tin Sports Com­plex.

Dur­ing the launch, there was a han­dover cer­e­mo­ny which in­clud­ed Bernadette An­toine, UWI - St Au­gus­tine Acad­e­my of Sport rep­re­sen­ta­tive and TTWCA gen­er­al sec­re­tary, for­mer West In­dies and T&T women's play­ers, skip­per Meris­sa Aguilleira, Tour­na­ment Di­rec­tor for the Ris­ing Stars Women's Tour­na­ment, and off-spin­ner Anisa Mo­hammed, venue man­ag­er at the Sir Frank Wor­rell Grounds, Nadra Dwari­ka-Bap­tiste, T&T Red Force U-19 Di­vas man­ag­er, Kir­by Moses, Fem­i­nitt rep­re­sen­ta­tive Safe Cy­cle co­or­di­na­tor and UWI Guild pres­i­dent and Shar­lene Mar­tin, Lee­ward Is­lands man­ag­er.

"It is an ini­tia­tive start­ed by the Acad­e­my of Sport and hope­ful­ly branch­es off to oth­er sports be­sides crick­et," said An­toine. "It re­al­ly fo­cus­es on the pro­vi­sion of such prod­ucts for girls and women in sport."

She added that An­toine many of the play­ers re­ceived it will open arms and point­ed out the im­por­tance of the project.

"It shows pro­gres­sion in women's sports, it pro­vides ath­letes a sense of free­dom of shame and guilt and en­cour­ages self-care and per­son­al hy­giene, it elim­i­nates gen­der in­equal­i­ties, and it pro­motes women em­pow­er­ment in sports," said An­toine.

She al­so hopes oth­er sports will join in this ini­tia­tive "as there are women in all sports who will ben­e­fit from it. Women em­pow­er­ment in sports is im­por­tant".

Fem­i­nitt Caribbean is a reg­is­tered NGO. Its mis­sion is to trans­form ex­ist­ing struc­tures of in­equal­i­ties and op­pres­sion with­in com­mu­ni­ties across the Caribbean and to bridge the gap be­tween ed­u­ca­tion and ad­vo­ca­cy by cre­at­ing an ac­ces­si­ble hub of in­for­ma­tion for so­cio-cul­tur­al and po­lit­i­cal de­vel­op­ment. Ac­cord­ing to its mis­sion, Fem­i­nitt is build­ing up­on decades of work and ad­vo­ca­cy of the Caribbean Women’s Move­ment- lead­ing and reimag­in­ing in­clu­sive cul­tur­al, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial fem­i­nist de­vel­op­ment in the Caribbean through mean­ing­ful col­lab­o­ra­tion, free­dom, in­tegri­ty and love.

The teams sure­ly felt the love in the week-long tour­na­ment, which end­ed yes­ter­day with Guyana tak­ing the ti­tle against the Lee­wards in the fi­nal at the BLCA by 23 runs via the DLS Method. T&T beat the Wind­ward Is­lands by five wick­ets in the third and fourth place play­off at the Diego Mar­tin Com­plex, and Ja­maica de­feat­ed Bar­ba­dos by sev­en wick­ets in the fifth and sixth place play­off at the Frank Wor­rell Memo­r­i­al Ground.