Before disposable pads and other mass-produced menstrual products became the norm, many societies created women’s hygiene products, including reusable cloth pads.

The members of the Philadelphia-based Pan-African Sisterhood Health Initiative, or P.A.S.H.I., get together once a week to recreate these culturally significant products.

A group of as many as 40 volunteers gathers every Wednesday at Grace Baptist Church of Germantown to create the pads, said Tiye Carter, a P.A.S.H.I. board member.

“It’s like an assembly line,” she said. “It’s a whole assembly line of people that are doing certain portions, and then it becomes one item. And from there, somebody else takes the pouches and they package them.”

Volunteers with different skills sit at tables and perform tasks for their “station” —

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