As you can imagine, our email inbox is often full of requests for help from organisations in Kenya who would like to join our pad project, which wholly depends on working with others there who share our goals. So how do we decide who to work with when we are thousands of miles away from the girls we want to help?
First we have to discount some of the requests because we no longer make pads in this country to send – it is just not practical now that we don’t travel there. Then, as our focus is on making of reusable pads, we have to turn down requests for money to buy disposable pads to distribute. We would like the pads to be made with locally available materials by local people and we give grants for the purchase of these tools and materials. We also hope the girls will find washing and reusing pads easier than getting a reliable supply of disposables. And, of course, from our point of view this is more environmentally sustainable. One of our partners is busy asking the girls themselves for their views about this.
You might then ask why not other reusable options like moon cups? The simple answer is that in many rural schools where we distribute pads there is not a reliable water supply to allow their safe use.
If the group who approach us are still keen after we have explained this way of working, we’ll continue the conversation…Look out for the future blog about next steps.