Reusable Sanitary Pads for School Girls in Malawi

Girl’s Pride is a project by a Malawi-local change-maker Gloria Walusa who created a program to keep impoverished Malawi girls in school by distributing reusable, sanitary menstrual cotton pads, teaching feminine hygiene, and building sanitary bathrooms in schools where there were none. Reusable sanitary menstrual pads in Malawi can cost between $0.85 – $1.30 US dollars, which is unaffordable for families living under $1 per day. Some girls will use dried leaves, plastic bags, paper, or rags to soak up blood as an alternative, but other girls will either stay home and miss school during menstruation, or even drop out from shame if they stain their uniforms. To keep girls in school, Gloria put together a team of volunteers to sew enough pads to donate 14 reusable cloth pads (which can last 3-5yrs) to each post-pubescent girl in 20 primary schools and 10 secondary schools in Blantyre district, Malawi, as well as build school bathrooms, teach hygiene, and teach sewing so she can recruit recipients of the pads to help create more pads for other girls in other schools. Girls shouldn’t drop out of school because they do not have hygienic facilities or feminine care, and especially not because of shame.