I never thought I would be writing a blog about sanitary towels and now it has happened twice (the first is here).
Thousands of girls in Burundi give up school every year because they don’t have any sanitary towels. They are simply too ashamed and embarrassed to go to school anymore, so they give up. But without education they are stuck in abject poverty.
Then along comes Eva, a local Burundian girl. If Eva were on Dragon’s Den she could be one of the most successful entrepreneurs ever.
Her brilliant solution is to manufacture re-usable sanitary towels from cloth and to distribute them at a very low price in schools, talking to girls to let them know how important it is to stay in school for as long as they can. She is battling the odds, and changing the culture by addressing one of the most crying needs of the day.
Last year we helped Eva get started. Already she and her team have made thousands of reusable sanitary towels for young girls, helping them stay in education, so that they have a hope and a future. She works in partnership with women’s organisations who also distribute the towels and promote education. Beautiful!
Now Eva wants to help thousands more girls over the coming year, in multiple schools, with a re-usable sanitary towel, also providing much-needed employment for those who make the towels. Eva has targeted the poorest provinces where very few girls have sanitary protection. She just wrote to let me know that she will have to stop her plans unless she gets the funds soon.
How can we resist helping her?
If you’d like to be part of this, giving even the poorest girls a hope and a future, please click here
God bless you loads!