Societies where women play an active role have best chances to develop sustainably. If all girls had 12 years of education, child marriage would drop 64%, early births would fall 59% and child deaths under 5 would decrease 49% (Source: UNESCO's Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/14).

That's why we must enable all girls in the world to go to school!

Marie_in_class_in_mathare-1448624529

But did you know that many girls can't go to school up to 70 days each year, because of their period? In Kenya, 60% of all women have no access to period protection. That leads to schoolgirls being unable to go to school when on their period and as a consequence the period weakens women's position in society.

I find that unacceptable!

So from May 2014 to January 2015 Racheal Kitui – a biotechnologist and social worker in Nairobi, Kenya, and I started a project to solve this problem. Check out the video here, about how it all started.

Racheal_and_marie-1448627284

Our goal was to see if reusable sanitary pads - the BeautyWaps – would help girls to go to school despite menstruation. And they did! The headmaster Dixon Owaga said more girls go to school all days of the month, instead of staying home up to 20% of the time while having their period. Look at the video with their testimonials!

Schoolgirls_receiving_waps-1448624577

Then Racheal did the necessary field research to find out how to manufacture the waps locally and what a Kenyan waps-kit would contain.

Now we want to get it done!

So the project's goal is to set up a Kenyan BeautyWaps- production so that Kenyan girls get access to nice, comfortable and healthy period protection so they can go to school on the same terms as the boys.

Beautywaps_productsv2-1448624945

BeautyWaps for Girls' Education