Akello school girl got her first period at school and had to use toilet paper to pad her self when she went back she asked her mother for sanitary pads. Her mother suggested she find herself a husband to pay for them. Akello was just 13. Many girls in Northern Uganda drop out of education when they begin menstruating because their schools lack proper washrooms or because they cannot afford costly sanitary pads mostly all imported from China. Many girls end forced into child marriages by parents too poor to buy sanitary pads.
“Most of my friends dropped out of school because they did not have basic things they needed like sanitary pads, just like me,” I had to endure monthly embarrassment, I had to miss classes for days fearing boys to laugh at me during my periods because I could not afford to have proper sanitary pads. My parents kept on encouraging me to get married but I refused because I wanted to stay in school so that I can achieve my dream of becoming a nurse." ...Akello said...
“When girls are out of school because they cannot manage their periods it's hard for them to avoid marriage.”
We continue to address this gap by locally producing and supplying affordable sanitary pads to school girls and refugees. JUST in the last 3 months we have distributed 3,780 packs of sanitary pads for free, we have conducted menstrual health education in school, and conducted community dialogues to create awareness among parents to prioritize buying sanitary pads for their daughters to enable them to stay in school and concentrate to their education which is a very powerful tool in the prevention of child marriage.
With your support, we have expanded our production unit to produce more pads that will reach out to more girls saving them from the embarrassment they undergo every month. We want to continue reaching to more girls with education, and supplies of affordable sanitary products. We are hopeful you will continue to support this noble cause with your generous donation.
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can recieve an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
