Keep Tanzania's Girls in School

The Tanzania's President Office (PO-RALG) shows that only 16.8 % of 8,012 girls interviewed in 2021, Dodoma Region,missed lessons due to lack of sanitary pads. This is an added challenge to the already existing problems that lead to the high dropout rate of female students in primary and secondary schools in Dodoma. Dodoma Rural where transport networks are often poor, ensuring a regular supply of disposable pads at an affordable cost is challenging to female students from poor families.

To address the problem, dDirect Relief Tanzania proposed the project that aimed to empower 5,000 poor female students from 50 public secondary schools in Dodoma Rural through provision of reusable sanitary pads, pair of underwear per girl and 500gms bar soap. Project will also provide menstrual hygiene management education. Distribution of reusable pads and menstrual hygiene management education has radically proved to create a world where women and girls can step boldly into the promise of their future.

For the period of October 2024 to December 2024. Direct Relief has been able to reach other government schools in Dodoma region and distribute sanitary pads to female students. The schools are Ihala Secondary School and Mwanakianga Secondary School. Direct Relief Tanzania was able to distribute a total of 3800 sanitary pads. In the implementation of the project in these schools, apart from distributing sanitary pads, Direct Relief Tanzania also provided reproductive health education to hundreds of students of these schools.

Although the contribution of this project is still low enough to hinder some of the project's activities, Direct Relief Tanzania has been able to mobilize funding from the communities surrounding the schools and finally to be able to get this number (3,800) of sanitary pads and distribute them to female students in need.

The success of this project requires a joint effort from the communities surrounding the schools that are in the project and other donors anywhere in the world. For that reason, we would like to kindly ask donors wherever they are in the world to continue supporting this project, so that we can reach more female students in order to give them the right to education as their constitutional right. As these female students from poor families have been losing their education for a long time, just because of lack of sanitary pads.
We have no doubt that you are among the people who like to see the world as a safe place for everyone. Your generous support is greatly  needed.