Author: Alaina
In rural Uganda, school-aged girls are dropping out of school because of social stigmatism and a lack of resources to manage their menstrual periods. This is detrimental to the girls’ education and opportunities, and also leads to early marriages and pregnancies.
Nyakeina Primary School was chosen as a pilot school and as our first project. We aimed to develop a sustainable, functional and socially discrete solution to help the girls feel empowered to attend school during their periods.
A crowd-funding campaign was initiated in Ontario, Canada, which raised enough money to purchase kits of resuable pads from Days for Girls, and award-winning international organization. Kits were purchased from a Days for Girls Distribution Centre in Kampala, thereby supporting the local industries as well as the women who sew the pads. Moses made the long trip to Kampala and back to collect the pads. Patience and Moses visited Nyakeina PS several times to gather information and deliver training on girls’ health and safe use of the pads. On May 9th 2018, the girls received the kits. Everyone was excited at this opportunity, and we hope that these girls will now be able to attend school consistently and graduate.
Our aim is to have these pads become a useful and sustainable part of girls’ and women’s lives in the district.
A huge thank you to everyone in Uganda and Canada who helped with this project!
Much love,
the ACHE team
Figure 1: photograph of the contents of each kit, with explanations by Patience and Moses
Video: the girls and their teacher say thank you to ACHE for the kits.