Days for Girls Uganda

Girls miss 5 days of school each month because of lack on pads. Some have gotten period because a man has offered her money to buy pads but with a reward of sex. 

Teaching the girls in school how to make their own reusable pads is a sustainable model that not only provides them with the product(reusable pad) but also provides them with the skill that can be passed on to the relatives and friends in the community.

If girls are taught how to make the pads, they can teach their friends and family members and through this we see a multiplying factor thus more girls getting the solution to manage their pads.

On any given day 800 million girls and women between the ages of 8 and 49 menstruate. Yet around the world menstruation is met with silence and discrimination, causing restricted mobility, infection, loss of economic participation, and even death. Women and girls who menstruate experience shame, anxiety, embarrassment, and pain. This experience is amplified by social norms that reinforce harmful practices and attitudes toward women and girls and are unresponsive to their health and well being.

In Uganda, girls miss 5 school days a month because of lack of sanitary products. This amounts to 45 days academic days out of 245 academic days of a school year.

This is mainly caused because of lack of money to buy pads so they end up going without. Teaching them how to make one for themselves will be a solution that is not only helping them save the costs but also providing a product they can go with.

Days for Girls takes a holistic approach to address menstrual health that includes improved access to menstrual products, education, and the promotion of positive social norms around menstruation. DfG provides washable pads (DfG Kits) and sexual and reproductive health education, which are delivered through a social enterprise model. The DfG social enterprise model empowers local leaders to develop livelihood skills, deliver menstrual health education, and sew and sell DfG Kits.Girls will be taught how to make reusable/washable pads using cotton cloth, a needle and thread. The girls a trained using that in a Days for Girls reusable design that has been certified by Uganda National Bureau of Standard(UNBS). This will provide the following;

1. A Skill of making the reusable pad so they can teach their relatives back home and neighbors thus having sustainability and reaching more girls indirectly
2. Girls get a product so they now have a product that they can trust not to leak and can now go to school each day without missing any day of school and getting back their dignity.
3. Incase the girls were affording to buy disposable pads once in a while, they can now save the money.
4. Boys will be taught in reproductive health

The purpose of this project is to secure sexual and reproductive health and rights for girls in 9 targeted schools in Luuka district. This project emerges to address common issues that face most girls in the sub Saharan Africa. In realization that girls in their growth periods continue to be vulnerable in terms of health, education, and human rights as they are exposed to serious social risks such as early marriage and pregnancy, school dropout, menstrual challenges among others all associated with deprivation of girls’ rights including but not limited to sexual and reproductive health rights. Days for Girls Uganda aims to bring awareness and access to sexual and reproductive health rights especially menstruation

20 full - time staff, 

10 contractors

15 part time staff