Why sanitary pads?
Girls and women around the world, particularly in developing countries, are actually using rags, even mud sometimes, when they’re menstruating – for 45 days a year, let’s say. This is causing them not to go to school, not to go to work, and it’s also causing health problems. And what are the ramifications of this? Women and girls make up the backbone of a lot of societies and are the support network for families’ welfare and well-being. For every dollar a woman makes, 80 cents is invested in the family’s welfare. For men it’s only 30 cents. You’ve now partnered with numerous organizations and institutions in Rwanda. What’s the key to success? We’ve been very careful about how we communicated our mission. When we went to the Ministry of Infrastructure, for instance, we didn’t say, ‘This is about girls not going to school.’ Instead, we said, ‘If you want to grow your economy, you need to make sure that half of your population is not at risk of not going to school because you don’t have a
