PRESS RELEASE
CONTACT:
Megan White Mukuria, AFZA President, +254.722.715.603,
Christine Folch, AFZA Chairwoman, 347.688.2890,
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
American Friends of ZanaAfrica receives US$100,000 Grand Challenges Exploration Grant for Ground-Breaking Research in Global Health and Development.
Funding will help implement an eco-friendly, affordable sanitary pad initiative in Kenya.
NEW YORK, NY, May 4, 2011 – American Friends of ZanaAfrica (AFZA) announced today that it is a Grand Challenges Exploration winner, an initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Lawino Kagumba, Ph.D. and Megan White Mukuria will pursue an innovative global health and development research project titled, “Novel Materials for Low-Cost Sanitary Pad Production.”
Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) funds scientists and researchers worldwide to explore ideas that can break the mold in how we solve persistent global health and development challenges. Dr. Kagumba and Ms. White’s project is one of over 85 Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 grants announced on 28 April 2011 by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
“GCE winners are expanding the pipeline of ideas for serious global health and development challenges where creative thinking is most urgently needed. These grants are meant to spur on new discoveries that could ultimately save millions of lives,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
To receive funding, Dr. Kagumba and Ms. White, and other Grand Challenges Explorations Round 6 winners, demonstrated in a two-page online application a bold idea in one of five critical global health and development topic areas: polio eradication, HIV, sanitation and family health technologies, and mobile health. Applications for the current open round, Grand Challenges Explorations Round 7, will be accepted through May 19, 2011.
Dr. Kagumba and Ms. White of American Friends of ZanaAfrica are developing sanitary pads that utilize an agricultural by-product as an alternative absorbent material. If successful, low-income women and girls across Kenya will have access to locally produced, affordable feminine hygiene products through a process easily replicated in other countries.
With its partner in Kenya, ZanaAfrica Group, AFZA will incubate the initiative in the University of Nairobi’s Science & Technology Park. Research shows that more than 800,000 girls in Kenya miss a week of school per month in part due to lack of sanitary pads. Adult women also struggle to manage their menstruation with dignity. A packet of pads costs as much as 2kg of flour across most of Kenya. Through innovation, ZanaAfrica expects to reduce the cost of sanitary pads significantly to serve a market sector that has not had previous access to feminine hygiene products and revolutionize girls’ education.
“In ten years of social enterprise in Kenya, I have yet to see a simpler, more direct way to have such large-scale social and economic impact than sanitary pads and girls’ education. We are thrilled to partner with the Gates Foundation to bring our long-researched ideas into reality,” said AFZA’s founder and president Megan White Mukuria, who this June will speak at the 19th Biennial Meeting of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research in Pittsburgh on sustainability in menstruation solutions. “I am proud to have such a strong, dynamic team to help girls and women attain their own dreams.”
About Grand Challenges Explorations
Grand Challenges Explorations is a US$100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, Grand Challenge Explorations grants have already been awarded to nearly 500 researchers from over 40 countries. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to US$1M.
About American Friends of ZanaAfrica Corp.
American Friends of ZanaAfrica (AFZA) is a non-profit public charity founded in 2007 to partner with ZanaAfrica Group (Kenya) to incubate African-led innovations that solve complex social problems through simple enterprise solutions. “Zana” in Kiswahili means “a tool” or “a weapon”– ZanaAfrica crafts ideas and technological innovations into weapons against poverty, to sustainably and replicably address root causes of poverty in the nexus of health, education, and environment, particularly for girls and women. Over 1400 girls have been provided annual supplies of sanitary pads while ZanaA has been working to create a local, sustainable manufacturing solution. AFZA’s plan for manufacturing won the Wharton Africa Business Forum Business Plan Competition in 2009 and was heralded as “game-changing for Africa” by a panel of judges engaged in venture capital and private equity across Africa.
ZanaAfrica has been at the forefront of raising awareness and mobilizing intervention for sanitary pads. Founder Megan White Mukuria launched the 2006 National Sanitary Towels Campaign (NSTC) in Kenya through Rotary with the Girl Child Network (GCN), the Ministry of Education (MoE), Proctor & Gamble (P&G), and other stakeholders and was a founding member of the 2008 NSTC Coordinating committee. She has been involved in the implementation plans for the Gender Policy in Education 2007-2008.
For more information please see https://zanaa.org.
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