【MHM Start-up Project】Crowdfunding campaign

This year 2022, we have had two interns Miyu and Rio who are university students joining our team. When they were high school students, they created a volunteer activity about hand-made sanitary pads production in order to send such pads to the girls who have challenges with menstruation issues in developing countries. Since GBN has been working in the same field, we decided to work with them to support their passion and managed to go to Uganda together for them to also participate and hand their 260 produced pads directly.

It all started on 5th May 2022, when we coordinated for the interns to first have a zoom meeting with some of the girl-students in one of the targeted schools in Naguru primary school in Uganda and found out that some students cannot go to school during their times of menstruation periods due to luck of enough sanitary products available and that they were using old pieces of clothes as a substitution. Daisy, a founder of VLF (Visionary Lady Foundation), and as well our counterpart in Uganda who has been trying to tackle this problem under her organization and has had several workshops to educate school-girls regarding menstrual hygiene management, also reported that due to insufficient funds to buy sewing machines and other materials to make pads, students normally had no option but to use the old pieces of clothes.

Therefore, the interns started a crowd-funding campaign before traveling to Uganda in order to purchase a sewing machine, a button installation, and some other essential materials needed for pad making such as clothes, needles, threads, etc.  Having in mind that, with providing these materials at school, students can then make their own sanitary pads so as to have sanitary products available which will help them to solve the problem of missing classes during their menstruation periods.

This will in the long run also help all women in the community that get a chance to participate in using these materials and have difficulties in going to the public or for work due to menstrual related issues. At the same time, by setting this facility at a public place like at school, it is also a chance for boys to have opportunities to learn about issues related to menstrual hygiene management so that they can also be able to assist their girl-child friends or family members in case they get into the same situations. 

This project is not yet completed but rather just the beginning. We shall first focus at setting up a supporting environment at our target school, Naguru primary school through providing sanitary pads to all girl students. After that we are planning to develop this project to distributing pads to other schools as well as setting a goal of reaching out to over a 1000 people in need in the community. 

We used the approach of providing pad making materials too since we thought and believed it to be the best way to support the local people through not only always providing them with finished products but to also help them learn how to make pads on their own and how to use them properly so that they can share it within the community to continue resolving menstrual related issues by themselves.

The fund we have attained this time would be used mainly for pad making but also for investigation purposes on other matters ie, education related issues, water, sanitation and hygiene facilities at school etc.

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