#EndPeriodPoverty for Girls in Rural Zimbabwe

March was a special month with the International Women's Day being commemorated on the 8th of March. This year, we adopted the international theme and modified it to, 'Invest in Girls: Accelerate Progress'.

We partnered with a leading tele-communications company, TelOne Zimbabwe and had outreaches with high school girls in Mazowe District. At the sessions, we celebrated the girls for remaining focussed on school regardless of the various challenges they could see in their communities. Some of their peers dropped out of school due to early or unwanted pregnancies as well as early childhood marriages. The girls were encouraged to stay in school and excel to have a brighter future for themselves and their families.

At the commemorations, we were accompanied by various professional women including marketing executives, human resources practitioners, accountants and IT specialists. These women had come from humble backgrounds, similar to the rural setting of these schools and had persevered with school and pursued the careers of their dreams. They gave testimonials, highlighting that your background did not limit what you could accomplish in life. These sessions were inspiring to the girls and gave them renewed hope and purpose.

The Talia team members, demonstrated how to make reusable sanitary pads using materials readily available in the home environment. They emphasised that they could use these skills to make pads for their family members and other vulnerable community members. Three hundred girls were impacted during these sessions and they all received packs with reusable sanitary pads. They were given a demonstration on how to use and care for the pads.

We are truly grateful for the support we continually receive on the GlobalGiving platform, which allows us to reach out to more and more girls in need. We are now in the month of May, Menstrual Hygiene month and we are planning to have more outreaches to the rural and remote communities to distribute the reusable sanitary pads and inspire the girls through various career talks and mentoring. Together we are fighting period poverty one girl at a time. We continually encourage our supporters to reach out to these girls, even in their own respective communities because period poverty is not just an Africa problem. If we do not act upon this issue urgently, no one else will.