SUpport Other Women. Period. 2025
We did it! We met our goal and thanks to you 1000 Kenya school girls will have period protection for an entire year!
March is International Women's Month, which means it is time again for our "Support Other Women Period" campaign! Last year, with the help of our donors we were able to raise the money we needed to provide period protection for 1200 Kenyan girls! We were blown away and so grateful! The high school population that we support just keeps growing and we have had other schools ask us for help. So we want to do all we can to meet that need.
The women of Restore Humanity believe the best way to celebrate International Women's month is for each of us to look at other women and find out what they really need--and then find effective ways to help provide it. Here in the US our focus tends to be on the necessity for our equality, respect, and opportunity--and rightfully so! However, we are remiss if we fail to notice the huge chasm between groups of women when it comes to more basic needs. And what could be more basic, or more of a woman’s issue than our periods?
While “lady-time” is no picnic for anyone, for millions of women and girls worldwide it means so much more than discomfort. Millions of women and girls do not have access to maxi pads or tampons at all simply because they cannot afford them. However, every woman knows that nature will still take its course and “Aunt Flo” is coming whether you want her to or not. So unfortunately these girls and women have to use things like mud, sticks, leaves, pieces of a foam mattress, or old rags to try to manage their cycles. Not only do these things not work, they sometimes cause harmful infections.
The statistics are staggering. For example, some estimates say that the average girl in Kenya misses 4.9 days of school every month, every single month of the school year. That means they’re missing at least 20% of their school year due to lack of maxi pads! That is just unacceptable. Period.
In 2012 I met with the girl students at Sirembe Secondary School (In Kenya) to talk about life and being a girl. At some point our discussion turned to the issue of schoolgirls having sex with older men, which is a problem for many reasons, not the least of which is the rapid spread of HIV. I asked them why girls were doing this and the first answer I got was “they do it to get money to buy things like maxi pads.” My jaw hit the floor. As I was leaving I asked them if there was one thing that I could do to help them, what would it be? Unanimously they said “Please buy us maxi pads.”
Since then Restore Humanity has provided maxi pads for the girls at Sirembe Secondary School, even as their population has continued to grow rapidly. And we have even started including other schools. While getting them pads was the most important thing, the impact on the environment was always in the back of our mind. The plastic in maxi pads is non-biodegradable which means they stay in landfills for about 800 years! So if we buy disposable pads for 1000 girls each month, and if each girl uses that pack of 12 every month, that is 12,000 pads thrown away each month and 144,000 per year from just one high school in rural Kenya! (432 million pads are disposed of each month globally).
The good news is that 6 years ago we found a better way! An incredible social business in Uganda called Afripads makes reusable maxi pads that last for an entire year and they are amazing! They employ 150 people in Uganda and upwards of 90% of them are women (in all levels of the business). They partner with nonprofits and women’s groups and have reached over 3.5 million women and girls with their products! (Watch the video below to learn more!)
Another exciting development is that Afripads is offering a special “schoolgirl menstrual kit” which has five pads (instead of four) including one for light days. They changed up their original product based on the feedback of school girls and we are excited to get this improved product to our girls! This packet costs around $5 and it lasts for an entire year. I have tested them out myself and they are really comfortable, they actually work really well, and they’re also really easy to wash and take care of! There are so many reasons why we love this program and here are just a few:
1. We help girls be safe, stay in school, and manage their periods with confidence and comfort.
2. We help the environment in a big way.
3. We support a social business in Africa that employs over 150 women.
4. AND it is cheaper! We now spend around $5.00 per girl per year and we were spending $12.00.
So pretty much it is a win, win, win, win. How could it get any better than that?!?