Over 2 billion women globally are menstruating and will do so for an average of 200 days in their life. We all exist because of this beautiful biological function. Why then, is it such a cause of shame and of shattering dreams? Why, then, is it clogging up our small planet at a rate of 7 pounds (3.5kg) per woman per year and consuming millions of tons of trees?
How Much Do You Know? Take this quiz to learn what girls go through in most countries.
ZanaA’s robust response to the dire implications of girls failing in school due to the days they miss because of their menstruation is to know all we can and do all we can. Our goal is nothing short of becoming the leading expert in all issues relating to sanitary pad manufacturing, distribution in Africa, and research. This can only be attained through a group effort, and in this interconnected world, we invite you to add to the knowledge base.
Here’s the problem
Globally, 150 million children currently enrolled in school may drop out before completing primary school – at least 100 million of these are girls.Kenyan adolescent girls miss approximately 3.5 million learning days per month due to lack of funds to purchase sanitary pads. This impedes their ability to compete in the classroom, leads to low self-esteem, higher drop-out rates and, in many areas of Kenya, makes them vulnerable to early marriage. Along with the lost learning days, girls not surprisingly lose self-confidence, and their chance of rising to the top of their class drops farther each month. Most of these girls will join the ranks of the unemployed, standing now at over 54% in Kenya and will undoubtedly remain throughout their lives amongst the 58% living in absolute poverty. The great potential they had before adolescence is blotted out, and their children will more than likely repeat this cycle.
Girls who lack sanitary pads often use crude and unhygienic methods, including using dry cow dung, or inserting cotton wool into their uterus to try to block the flow. In urban slums, girls are widely known to collect used pads from garbage dumps, and wash them for their own use. These measures often result in serious health complications. It is common to tear blue-jeans and use that fabric as a sanitary pad, but the resulting chaffing often causes extremely painful and embarrassing boils to develop. To combat these problems, they result to another “solution” that bears serious consequences: prostitution.
Here’s what we’re doing
ZanaA has found a long-term and holistic solution to this problem, which is to establish a sustainable business creating locally-produced, environmentally-safe sanitary pads in Kenya while advocating for greater policy support of girls (read here for more on that).
First, ZanaA plans to coordinate, on-line, the national distribution of sanitary pads, to ensure all vendors are distributing proper sanitary pads and with synchronized training in sanitary pad use and disposal as well as age-appropriate sexual maturation education.
This will help reduce the logistical burden of sanitary pad distribution, ensure sexual predators are not given entry to the school, distribute pads at the convenience of the school curriculum, enable equitable distribution across the country, and reduce the cost burden to donors. Along with this comes the development of a tool kit for enhancing policy around girls and education.
Second, ZanaA has become the exclusive distributor to the informal market (including school girls) for a sanitary pad invented by Dr. Musaazi of Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda, called MakaPads™, made from local, easily replenishable natural resources.
MakaPads has been approved by the Ugandan Bureau of Standards, is in the final stage of registering with the Kenyan Bureau of Standards, and is pending international patent. This is the first of several solutions, to provide sanitary pad production opportunities using available natural resources.
Third, ZanaA is interesting in networking with any producers of sanitary pads and any organizations who provide or who are planning to provide sanitary pads to schools because the world can handle many solutions for different contexts. We are particularly interested in leveraging agricultural waste.
We’re been working on this ourselves because we want nothing short of the lowest-cost, most environmentally responsible and easiest-to-scale solution. Our model won the 2009 Wharton African Business Forum business plan competition and was called “game changing for Africa” by the panel of judges. Our partner to get us from concept to implementation is a fabulous group of saavy MBAs, Open Capital Advisors.We have some impressive thought partners, including the University of Nairobi’s Science and Technology Park.
While Acumen Fund, Grass Roots Business Fund and others are interested in investing in scaling our model, our pre-production fundraising will largely be through individuals and foundations – people who see the huge future impact and can offer grants or program-related investments to reach production capacity of 1 million pads per month, incubated in Kenya’s first science park at the University of Nairobi.
Alongside product innovation, conversations have been started with networks of women’s groups regarding sales of pads to women at the bottom of the pyramid, and with NGOs to buy to distribute to school girls. Using a “salesmoms” sales force, ZanaA will help to keep limited financial resources within communities rather than going to a small group of shareholders in the West at the expense of Kenya’s systematic growth.
Last, we maintain a strong grass-roots presence, helping empower girls and working out the nitty gritty details of on-the-ground training and distribution, making sure we’re always close to girls to understand what they want and what they need. Right now we are giving out over 1,000 annual supplies of sanitary pads to girls and monitoring the impact on attendance, performance, and matriculation – with their active participation in the process.
Stay tuned for more on how we’re achieving our goals!
