Re-usable, washable sanitary towels and undergarments program for poor young women in Kiambu County, Kenya

Summary of Taking Action

Assessment:
We were led to assess viability of re-usable sanitary napkins project after evaluating our initial project which was providing for disposable towels to poor girls. From dialogue with community stakeholders we realized not only were we not able to sustain the disposable sanitary program, but there was a huge need to conserve our environment since there was atrocious litter of menstrual waste. One day a boy from our community yelled at us and hulled insults at us because he was disgusted when he stumbled on used, bloody pad in his school play ground and so boys blamed us because it is us who supplied girls with sanitary pads. You can read full story from our reports to our micro-donors here - http://tinyurl.com/khk8bgz

Planning:
Our vigorous assessment became our awakening call that we needed to start providing reusable, washable, long-lasting pads. Further assessment revealed to us that none were championing this locally and that is why we looked further and found international partners who could help us realize our goal. When we began to plan we realized that we needed to craft our vision and mission from just keeping girls in school during their menstrual periods to keeping girls in school, dignity and play while conserving our environment. This milestone of crafting a new approach and a new project could not have been reached without concerted efforts and community dialogue with stakeholders. We therefore appreciate the boys who yelled at us for giving girls disposable pads and environmental organizations that sat down with us or yelled at us to provoke our thinking that led to planning.

Taking Action:
Initially we had involved women in our community to donate just one packet of disposable pads to our project hence making it very easy to give which translated to ease in sustainability. But now we needed a new approach and these same women were very willing to help us during the distributions but more exciting some of them even though not being poor were ready to try the re-usable kits which made our beneficiary drop the myths that reusable pad are for poor people. We wanted not just our poor beneficiaries, but the community at-large understand that reusable menstrual pads are environmentally friendly yet also comfortable. When these not-so-poor women try these kits and give us positive reports we are glad that we are not forcing reusable kits to our beneficiaries who may be too naïve to speak up.

Evaluation:
Nevertheless, we could never know whether all our beneficiaries were fine with the re-usable kits and so we needed to evaluate on this new approach. The findings to this evaluation is also shared to our partners and donors through our quarterly reports here - http://tinyurl.com/l8mznoq We found out that 85% of beneficiaries were very fine with reusable pads while 15% were not fine. At a closer evaluation the 10% of dissatisfied complained of itchiness & rashes on their private parts. We took a task to consult a physician and that is when we realized that the 10% never cleaned their towels well or left them to dry fully before using again or never used soap to clean and this is because some were very poor to afford soap. We now provide soap and more enhanced training on care of kits and the 10% have now joined the very satisfied lot. The 5% who claimed the reusable kits were heavy and preferred disposable ones we found to be from capable homes or had wealthy relatives who provided for them while some had boyfriends who provided for them…sad in a tender age though.

Sustaining the work:
Because we depend on donations shipped from the US we realized we need more effort in fundraising so that when we receive the kits we can cater for under panties, soap and training plus logistics and stipend for our team of workers and volunteers. But for long term sustainability and to break the over-dependence of foreign donations we have had our team trained by Days for Girls with help from Global Seed Planters, the training is on how to make the reusable sanitary kits. Though we have started small we have a sewing center with 2 sewing machines running full time with ability to produce 10 kits a day. Our goal is to expand this sewing centre and market our kits to national & county government and corporate entities so that when we give some to charity they can supplement our efforts by buying from the project and have us distribute to beneficiaries for free since many of them cannot afford to buy.