Empower & Educate the Girls of Rural Kisumu

International Women's Day

On 8^th March 2019, RKF participated in the International Women’s Day Campaign that was a part of the GlobalGiving GirlFund Campaign. And with your incredible support, we raised a total of $1,256 in less than 24 hours! We are absolutely overwhelmed and honored to be associated with such great cheerleaders for the girls of Kisumu. We can’t wait to take the RKF Sanitary Pads Program to even more girls and help them keep progressing through their education… as is their right!

Improving...

We’re listening to our community.

After our pilot program last year, we received feedback from the girls that a slightly larger kit would be more effective. We learnt that 4 pads were not enough; so we're partnering with PadMad to provide 7 pads to girls in rural schools. What makes this partnership special is that these pads are made using Kenyan cotton by Kenyan women. This creates a beautiful cycle of women empowering women!

When we spoke to the girls at Lutheran Special School in January, they gave us some very simple feedback to improve the program that is both efficient and cost-effective. They gave us a suggestion to provide a more complete “kit” by adding a small bucket and some clothes pegs (at an additional $1) that would make it incredibly easy for them to manage and maintain their re-usable kits. So we did it! All the girls at Lutheran Special School now have their own buckets and set of clothes pegs to manage their kits well.

Growing...

Another 20 girls at Busabakhwa Primary School are now a part of the RKF Sanitary Pads Program. Our friends at Kenyan Kids took 20 kits and had an incredible talk with the girls on Menstrual Health Management. An additional 11 girls at Lutheran Special School also received sanitary pad kits in March. We hope to reach an additional 50 girls in May once schools resume for the second academic term of 2019.

Links:

• Become an RKF Patron: Make a Recurring Donation
• RKF Sanitary Pads Program
• Learn More About RKF Programs

To kick off the new academic year in Kenya, RKF implemented the Sanitary Pads Program at Lutheran Special School in Kisumu. As a part of this, 21 girls received the AFRIPads Deluxe Menstrual Kit that will last them 12 months and ensure they can carry on with their school activities even when they are menstruating. Each kit contains 4 re-usable sanitary pads, a small bag and a Girl Talk Booklet.

The Senior Teacher of the school conducted a fun, hands-on workshop in Luo (the local dialect) that gave the girls an opportunity to learn through demonstration and ask any questions they had.

The Sanitary Pads Program was started to address the issue of poor attendance of girl students across various parts of Kenya due to lack of access to menstrual hygiene products. When we first visited the students of Lutheran Special School in late 2016, we were made aware of this issue and we hope this program will help address it. We look forward to receiving feedback from the girls and improving the Sanitary Pads program and further implementing various other programs.

After the success of the pilot program last year, we are really excited to scale this program to reach at least 200 girls in the first academic term of 2019. More update coming soon.

Links:

• Become an RKF Patron: Make a Recurring Donation
• RKF Sanitary Pads Program
• Learn More About RKF Programs