Sanitary towels program impacts more girls making us to wins 2nd Prize in 2010 Out of the Box Prize from Kansas University-USA

SHORT HISTORY
We began this project in 2007 then with one girl who had dropped out of school after she encountered an embarrassing incident in school. The piece of rag she was using during her menses got soaked with blood staining her school dress badly. Boys scolded he and girls made her a gossip topic until she could take it no more and opted to drop out. Her impoverished single mother brought her to us for counselling. We managed to counseled her buy her sanitary towels for that months then it downed on our team that this was not a one time need and we therefore needed to plans for continuous supply, we shockingly got to learn that there are more and more girls who are in similar predicament but suffer in silence.

OUR RESPONSE
At this realization we took to us a task to source for support and provide sanitary towels to all needy girls and poor women. With support of local community, The Owili Project-Netherlands and Community tool Box (Kansas University USA) we are currently supporting approximately 300 young women with continuous supply of sanitary towels. Although our work do not eliminate the need because of the magnitude the effort is worth praise.

POSITIVE IMPACT
The impact of sanitary pads support to needy girls is rising of academic performance of the beneficiaries. Reduction of morbidity rate and restoring of dignity and self esteem. Also, more people including the ministry of education in Kenya are realizing that this although never realized by many is a huge problem indeed. The Kenya government for the first time has allocated some funds in its June 2011 budget to supply schools with sanitary towels. This is a milestone step towards ensuring girls get equal play ground to compete with boys. Although the funds allocated are very limited comparing to the need we believes it is an achievement especially to our organization and other activist whose concerted efforts has made the government realize the need of supporting girl child with sanitary towels.

AWARDS
This project won 2nd Prize in a competition called OUT OF THE BOX PRIZE by Community Tool Box, an initiative of Kansas University-USA. We emerged winners from 309 entries from 42 countries. Follow the link to learn more. http://ctb.ku.edu/en/out_of_the_box/finalists/Finalist9.aspx