SHEcelebrated its 5th annual Menstrual Hygiene Day in Rwanda on May 29th. With the Ministry of Health as our official sponsor, we were able to carry out this year's theme, it's time for action, to the fullest! We constructed a brand new girls' room, a safe space where 1,200 female students can now manage their periods while at school. You can get the full scoop on this year's Menstrual Hygiene Day activities here: MHD 2019 blog. We hope that our collaboration with the Ministry of Health will continue to engage more partners to invest in the basic health and education of women and girls.
Click to WatchSHE's Menstrual Hygiene Day Celebration 2019
The Philippines Farm Fiber Too?
In 2018, our engineer extraordinaire and Technical Director, Leah Putman, traveled to Zimbabwe to check out the fiber scene there. This year, we headed to the Philippines to increase SHE's knowledge base of fiber varieties and how to work with them to make more go! pads. We won't get into the nitty gritty tech stuff here but you can read up on what we learned from the Philippines by visiting our blog.
Making SHE Clubs Trendy
It's no secret that most schools don't have a club focused on menstrual hygiene. So we're testing them out in Rwanda to sustain menstrual hygiene education. Our Health and Hygiene Manager Ariane Dusenge visited 16 school SHE clubs. Each club meets 3 to 4 times weekly and has at least 50 members, 70% of which are female. Topics include all things menstrual hygiene and ways to reduce the stigma surrounding menstruation. So far, we have planted 59SHE clubs in schools!