ZanaAfrica Foundation provides adolescent girls in East Africa with the resources they need to live more healthy and informed lives. We are showing girls they are powerful agents of change in their own lives through supporting them in mind, body and spirit. This holistic approach includes sanitary pads and underwear that girls need and want, standardized and aspirational health education, and safe spaces and mentors for girls in their communities.
For the nearly 6 million adolescent girls in Kenya: 2 in 3 girls lack access to sanitary pads while there is also no mandated sexual and reproductive health and rights education to deliver critical help; 60% of adolescent girls in Kenya drop out of secondary school; 1 in 10 girls have engaged in transactional sex in order to obtain pads.
By connecting girls to mentors in safe spaces, and expanding access to sexual and reproductive health education (SRHE) alongside pads to manage menstruation - we're working to break these cycles of disempowerment to help girls reclaim their voice, body, and rights, and to ultimately step into the promise of their future.
We acknowledge that girls and women have been historically undervalued and that their rights, dignity, and voice have been systematically denied across their lifespan. This is the problem we seek to address. We use menstrual health as a gateway into the lives of women and girls to deliver the products and the SRHE they seek and deserve. Our goal is to help girls to be healthy, safe, and informed so that they can access their personal agency and realize equality.
