Support 2000 Kenya school girls with reusable pads

The year 2020 is gone and we have started a new year 2021, it is our prayers that the year will be fruitful and we will have more reasons to smile and forget the year 2020 which was very difficult for many people in the world.  Lives has been lost and many other negative things came in as a result of the pandemic.  We are happy that finally our schools have been opened and student have reported back.  It was our prayers for this to happen as it really hurts to see young people boys and girls ruining their lives and other people ruining lives of the young people.  In this case our girls in many parts of the country were negatively affected by the prolonged closure of schools where many men took advantage of them being out of school.  The government has been reporting an increased number of girls dropping out of schools as a result of pregnancies and early marriages during the pandemic which is very sad.  Poverty as well has contributed to this and many girls fell in the traps of men who used them sexually cheating them with money and taking advantage of their vulnerability.  Sanitary towels are basic essentials that every girl over the age of 12 years and some even below need to have every month and have enough of them to use during their ministrations.  Unfortunately for some reasons, many girls and especially in the villages where majority are do not always have sanitary towels when they need them.  We have been distributing reusable sanitary towels in schools so that these girls have them ready every month they need them.  In November and December 2020 we distributed 100 packs of reusable sanitary towels to needy girls in Kajiado, Isiolo and Baringo Counties especially focusing on young girls who have just started experiencing monthly periods.  We understand that there is an increased need of sanitary towels in various parts of the country and we intend to distribute more sanitary towels in schools.  We hope to have more friends, well-wishers, partners and donors contribute to our project to enable us distribute more sanitary towels to the needy girls and save them from the men who are sexually using them in exchange of money to buy sanitary towels.  This project has benefitted many girls and we would wish to have many more benefiting.  There are many young girls who are starting their periods at a tender age and we would hate to see them suffering and struggling during their monthly periods.  We invite you to help us save our young girls by contributing to this project and buy them sanitary towels.  Thank you for the support given previously and helping in saving our girls, we really appreciate and together we will save even more and build their confidence and dignity.  Thank you once more.

Reopening of schools in the country is the hot topic at the moment.  There has been confusion on whether learning will resume late this year or January 2021.  The government seems to be in confusion as well.  In the course of the week, the education cabinet secretary announced that there are possibilities that schools will be reopened in early October but the government has not given official communication on the same.  Most of the times we take things for granted, in our previous report, we talked of conducting sessions and distribution of sanitary towels as if it was to happen the following week little did we know it will take almost the whole of this year.  Of course we were positive and had a lot of hopes that things would normalise soon but this has not been the case.  The learners have been at home since March and the challenges have been increasing day in day out.  Our girls have been very vulnerable as earlier reported and unfortunately the cases of school girls getting pregnant have been increasing in most parts of the country.  High poverty level and idleness greatly contributed to this and we are very concerned of our girls.  The need for sanitary towels has continued to grow and many organizations have been standing in the gaps and supporting girls with sanitary towels in various parts of the country.  In our case, we hope to continue distributing reusable sanitary towels to the school girls as we have been doing.  During the pandemic, we have been supporting the few that we could reach and now preparing to distribute more in the schools once they are opened hopefully soon.  We have been conducting follow ups with our previous beneficiaries on their experience with the reusable sanitary towels and the feedback we got were encouraging and giving us more reasons to continue fundraising for the project.  The beneficiaries reported that the sanitary towels have been great and very useful to them.  They reported that compared to the disposable pads, they prefer reusable ones as they can use for quite a long period of time.  They are comfortable and easy to clean they reported.  We hope to get more feedback from other beneficiaries once we visit them in schools.  The demand on the other hand has increased as there are many girls reaching the adolescent stage and the requests for the support have already been forwarded to our office.   We cannot promise much but we will try our best to support the very vulnerable girls as we continue requesting for your support, please consider supporting the needy girls in our society and especially during these very difficult moments.  Thank you for the support channelled to the needy through this platform and we request for more support.  Thank you so much.

The year 2020 turned to be a very different year to many people in different countries world wide as a result of corona virus infections.  In some countries the pandemic started as early as January and since then many activities have been heavily affected.  In Kenya the first corona virus case was reported in March where the government closed all the institutions immediately.   Our plans were to visit the schools and conduct trainings in various schools and distribute sanitary towels but due to the pandemic this turned out to be a different story.  In February we managed to visit a primary school in Baringo County as earlier reported.  During the visit, we conducted empowering sessions to the girls and teachers and distributed 120 packs of reusable sanitary towels to the girls.   The sessions were very fruitful and we promised to continue with the sessions during monitoring visits in the course of the year.  We had scheduled visit to other schools in the course of the term in Baringo and Nakuru County which we had to cancel when the schools were closed.  The idea was to conduct more sessions empowering our girls and the teachers and distributing sanitary towels where possible.   We hope to continue with these sessions once the schools reopen.  At the moment, we continue fundraising for reusable sanitary towels to be distributed as we go for the sessions.  The number of schools requesting for our support is increasing where many teachers have reported cases of vulnerability in most families expressing urgent need of the sanitary towels as many young girls are dropping out of school at early stages.  Due to vulnebility, many young girls are being abused by the young men in the villages where they are sexually used for them to be given some money to buy some essentials as sanitary towels.  As a result of this, some girls end up getting pregnant and others getting married at very early ages thus dropping out of school.  We are concerned if they continue staying home due to corona virus pandemic as the number of these cases may continue to rise.  As we continue fundraising, we request for your support on this as we also thank you for your continued support. 

It’s another new year and we are happy to report that our girls from different schools had a great long December holiday.  They are now back to school for a new term and for those who graduated from primary school they have now joined different secondary schools in different parts of the country.  We are proud of them for the achievements and smooth transition.  As we start the year, we plan to do more for our girls in terms of empowering them and ensuring that they remain in school as expected.  We have a group of girls who are starting their adolescent and maturity and menstruation might be a night mare to some of them and especially the very young one who doesn’t understand what is happening or what will happen to their bodies.  There is need to have  sessions on some of these sensitive topics with them to prepare them even before they are taught by their teachers where sometimes they don’t dig deeper into the details and we have realized that some of them are not well prepared and they get confused in the process.  Our plans are to have these sessions with these girls and their teachers so that they can understand into details what this is all about as well as give them room to air their views and ask questions which they might be having.   We intend to do this when distributing reusable sanitary towels in various schools in the course of the year.  The idea is to support and help as many girls as possible but due to limited resources, we are not in a position to support many girls but with your support and donations, we can increase the number of beneficiaries and we therefore invite you as we start the year to consider walking the journey with us.  This school term, we intend to distribute some sanitary towels to a school in Baringo where we will also conduct the sessions as we continue fundraising for more funds to support other schools who have already requested us to consider them.  We appreciate the support and your generous contributions that you have given us.   Thank you very much as we pray for more blessings to you and your loved ones.   

Provision of sanitary towels to the school girls has been a very successful interventions with a lot of impact to the girls and their parents.  We have been following up the impact of the sanitary towels distributed to girls in primary and secondary schools and the feedback we received from the girls and teachers was impressing.  Their performance has really improved since they have been attending school throughout the term unlike before where they used to miss school during their monthly periods which really affected their performance.  The teachers informed us that they have also gained a lot of confidence and courage and they are now in a position to raise their voices and whenever they are any type of harassments by the men or boys they speak out and raise the alarm.  The teachers said the girls are now empowered and the boys are feeling threatened.  We were impressed by the feedback from the girls and the teachers and we would like to express our appreciation to our friends and well-wishers for their generous contribution and improving the life style of our young girls. 

We bought more sanitary towels which we distributed to another vulnerable primary school in Baringo and 60 girls benefitted.  During our previous sanitary towels distribution in other schools, teachers informed us that some girls did not have panties and teachers requested us to consider supporting most vulnerable with panties when distributing sanitary towels.  Through our friends we managed to raise some money for panties and when we were distributing sanitary towels we gave 2 panties to all the sixty girls.  We will be requesting contribution from our friends and well-wishers and when possible we will be distributing them to vulnerable girls when distributing sanitary towels to the girls.  We therefore extend the invitation to our global giving friends and well-wishers to consider continue contributing to this initiative and also consider contributing towards panties for the vulnerable girls.  Thank you in advance for all your support.  Our schools will be closing school next week for the long December holiday and we hope to do more fundraising between now and January so that we can raise more funds to continue supporting our school girls once they resume school next year.  As they break for long holiday we wish them all the best and we always advise them to take care and especially during the festive period we believe they will be safe and we will have them back to school next year God willing.  Thank you.