“Protect School girls during menstruation period project”

Through this initiative we are solving the problem that makes 90% of girls to stay away from school for a whole week during menstruation periods making them lose important learning hours. This means that on average, most menstruating girls in Manyara region of Tanzania lose 50 full school days in a year due to  inconveniences related to Menstrual health and Hygiene(MHH).

 Manyara Region “Protect School girls during menstruation period project” is based in Northern area of Tanzania, located at 804.2 km west of Dar es Salaam, the business city of Tanzania. The program covers six districts namely Babati town, Babati vijijini, Hanang’, Mbulu, Kiteto and Simanjiro, which covers an area of 44,522km2. Manyara Region's current estimated total population is 1,425,131 people according to a growth rate of 3.3 % of the 2012 population census. The program aims to impact on the total population of the programme.

Socio-economic situation. Manyara Region is inhabited by various ethno-linguistic groups and communities. These include the Assa, Gorowa, Kw’adza, Mbugwe, Datooga, Maasai, Barabaig and Irakw, which is the largest ethnic group in the region.

 Livestock is the mainstay of this community, close to 60% of their income is derived from this sector.  According to the 2012 Welfare Monitoring Survey, about 64% of the total districts’ population lives under the poverty line whereby 70% are women.  Illiteracy level stands at 85%, poor infrastructure facilities, poor markets, high prices of manufactured inputs, human wildlife conflict and increased HIV/Aids and FGM reported cases among others contribute to the high level of poverty and illiteracy.

Target Population. The program's target population is about 850,000 of which 60% of this population is the girls under the age of 20 years. The project aims to impact on all the youth either directly or indirectly. Greater attention will be given to the girl child because the community culture has greatly disadvantaged her. The youth form another targeted category, women, community leadership and community-based organizations and households.

WHY SHOULD WE PRODUCE AND SUPPLY REUSABLE SANITARY PADS?

Embrace Africa believes that if we innovate and produce these safe reusable products, the impacts to the society will be positive and helpful.

The purpose of this project is to create a conducive environment for women and girls to be appreciated and have them enjoy equal opportunities as men and boys so that they can realize their full potential in the society. This will boost their self-esteem as well as self-confidence.

 Embrace Africa has proposed to produce and supply reusable pads since they have clear cost benefit to the society of lower income level. These reusable sanitary pads can be washed, dried and used again for a minimum of 12 months making them a highly cost-effective solution. These will be affordable and costs savings than disposable pads. As per Embrace Africa’s findings, these products will lower production costs, combined with simplified and more affordable logistics as only one distribution moment per year is required. Putting in mind these transformational impacts that a quality reusable menstrual solution can have on the health and wellbeing of women and girls, we have decided to come up with this re-usable sanitary pads’ initiative. 

Our plan is to reach a total of 100,000 poor rural women and school going girls altogether every year.  

Target Population. The program's target population is about 850,000 of which 60% of this population is the girls under the age of 20 years. The project aims to impact on all the youth either directly or indirectly. Greater attention will be given to the girl child because the community culture has greatly disadvantaged her. The youth form another targeted category, women, community leadership and community-based organizations and households.

This initiative is expected to meet the following needs:

• To empower women and girls by giving them protection and comfort they need during menstruation.
• To help women and girls overcome the barriers that menstruation creates in their lives so they rise to their full potential.
• To enable school girls to stay in schools, women to go to work and participate in daily life with confidence, dignity and peace of mind they deserve.
• To provide MHH education through continuous trainings to Women and girls which will provide full knowledge of MHH and how to use these sanitary pads.
• To offer a holistic Menstrual Health and Hygiene (MHH) solution.
• To protect school girls against ‘SEX FOR PADS’ perpetrators

Our office is registered, recognized and authorized to operate in the target region. We have our head office in the region and we have operated in the area for more than 5 years prior to our official registration. We have already done parts of the following activities and we plan to carry out the rest according to our work plan to ensure that the targeted population are part and parcel of the planning, designing and implementation of this project.

Through Open forums and dialogue with school girls to know the problems facing girls during their menstruation.

Embrace Africa will conduct 12 dialogues in 6 districts 2 for each district to enable us raise and discuss different problems and challenges facing school girls during their menstruation. The dialogue will include 120 girls from each district, an invitation of 12 female students will be send to 10 schools in each district.

The dialogue will be conducted by Embrace Africa team in collaboration with 5 health officers and 10 female teachers.

Through Round table meeting with female teachers, health officers and women groups.

Embrace Africa will conduct 1 day roundtable meeting in each district to discuss the raised issues collected during the dialogue. The health officers, female teachers and women groups will discuss these problems and give the best solution.

Through Training to 600 school girls from 6 districts.

Embrace Africa will conduct a two-day training containing 100 school girls in each district. The training will be facilitated by 4 specialists’ female doctors from nearby hospitals. The mode of training will be open and participatory mode where girls will be free to contribute and asks questions concerning the key topics.

Through this training, girls will be trained in all matters relating to reproductive health, menstruation and MHH in general.

We hope to acquire from SOLVE and all SOLVER teams inputs that can make our activities successful and impactful to the targeted populations. We would like to hear from people from different parts of the world how they would solve our problem. We are here to learn and gain necessary knowledge on how to handle and overcome different challenges posed to us by life. 

Being an organization based in an underdeveloped country, we seek financial, technical, legal, cultural and any other form of assistance that we can source from the other solver teams to build our capacity to handle challenges of life.

Re-usable Sanitary Pads is a game-changer project which intends to overcome key challenges that women and girls face while on their monthly period in relation to access, affordability and sustainability of sanitary products. Through this initiative, Embrace Africa intends to help women and girls to overcome the barriers that menstruation creates in their lives so they rise to their full potential.

These pads will empower women and girls who will use them with the protection and comfort them during menstruation. This will enable girls to stay in schools, women to go to work and participate in daily life with confidence, dignity and peace of mind they deserve.  As an impact – driven organization, Embrace Africa knows that menstrual health goes beyond menstrual products, this project will offer a holistic Menstrual Health and Hygiene (MHH) solution.

Alongside these reusable sanitary pads, Embrace Africa has planned to provide MHH education through continuous trainings to Women and girls which will provide full knowledge on MHH and how to use these sanitary pads, also Embrace Africa will conduct a proper Monitoring and Evaluation framework to get the feedbacks and measure how far the project has been of profit to the society. 

This support would go a long way in transforming of the economic and social lives of the rural poor women who are often marginalized and lack access to means of production thus improving their livelihoods.  

Embrace Africa believes that if we overcome menstrual cycle barriers for women and girls, it is one step closer to gender equality in Tanzania.

Through the establishment of a fully equipped production unit, Embrace Africa has proposed to produce and supply reusable pads since they have clear cost benefit to the society of lower income level. We will need a one-off financial grant to establish the production unit and to train tailors who will work to make the pads after which Embrace Africa has a series of activities which will help to make the project self-sustaining. These reusable sanitary pads can be washed, dried and used again for a minimum of 12 months making them a highly cost-effective solution. These will be affordable and costs savings than disposable pads. As per Embrace Africa’s findings, these products will lower production costs, combined with simplified and more affordable logistics as only one distribution moment per year is required. Putting in mind these transformational impacts that a quality reusable menstrual solution can have on the health and wellbeing of women and girls, we have decided to come up with this re-usable sanitary pads’ initiative. And our project outputs are as listed below:

- 1 sanitary pad production unit established

- 10 tailoring machines purchased

- 5 electric rotary cutters purchased

- 3 over lock machines purchased

- 50 packages of self-locking buttons purchased

- 20 Pairs of Scissors bought

- 50 Measuring tapes bought

- 1000 rollers of fabric materials purchased

- 20 tailors to be trained

Key Objective: Embrace Africa aims to create a mechanism that will help us to produce and supply sanitary pads and train targeted groups.

The following are the indicators that will measure the progress of our project and to help monitor and report the same. Through laid down monitoring and evaluation methods and strategies, we shall gauge our project by observing and recording the following items:

- 500,000 pieces of reusable sanitary pads produced and distributed to girls and women in Manyara Region.

- 10 project pilot schools identified from six districts

- 720 girls attended open forum and dialogues

- 20 female teachers, health officers and women groups attended roundtable meeting

- 600 women and girls attended awareness raising training

- 6 TV programs prepared and aired

- End of project evaluation conducted (consultant hired)

• Embrace Africa has proposed this project to produce and supply reusable pads since they have positive economic benefits to women and girls of the low-income level. The ultimate goal of this project is to minimize the challenges that women face to access basic needs such as sanitary pads, we aim to help women and poor families save that little income for other family needs by offering a short-term, intermediate-term and long term solution to the menstrual challenges. These reusable sanitary pads can be washed, dried and used again for a minimum of 12 months making them a highly cost-effective solution. These will be affordable and cost effective compared to disposable pads and will be a big cost-saving initiative to women and girls who in most cases have to make a choice between either using the minimal income to buy basic needs or to buy sanitary pads. As per this project planning, the methods applied will lower production costs, we will also use simplified and more affordable logistics. It is for these transformational impacts that a quality reusable menstrual solution will have on the health and wellbeing of women and girls, that we have decided to undertake our project to produce and supply reusable sanitary pads to women and girls in Tanzania.

In almost all African countries, cloth and other locally available unhygienic materials have been used by women and girls as a traditional menstruation solution for centuries. In Embrace Africa we believe that if we innovate and produce these safe reusable products, the impacts to the society will be positive and helpful. This technology will be environmentally friendly because it will reduce the rate of disposal of used pads to the environment. It will reduce the amount of cloth that will be used because a pack of five pads will be sufficient for a lady's menstrual cycle the whole year as compared to the current situation whereby a lady uses and disposes approximately 10 pieces per month.

The purpose of this project is to create conducive environment for women and adolescent girls during their menstruations, be appreciated, healthier, comfortable and confident to enjoy and utilize the available social economic potentials in the society. Availability of reusable sanitary pads will boost the self-esteem and self-confidence of women and girls in the society and safeguard our environment from the negative impacts associated with manufacturing and disposal of pads.

Embrace Africa commits to be a Gender Equality and Social Inclusion responsive organization, opposing all forms of discrimination and exclusion. It is our commitment to increase equality of opportunity for marginalized groups that pushed us to move our operations from the Urban areas to the rural area where we are in position to interact first hand with the target audiences. We commit to improving diversity and inclusion within our own teams, including committing to be anti-racist and anti-discriminatory in our day-to-day activities, and requiring individual diversity, race and inclusion objectives for each team member. Our ambition is for Embrace Africa to go beyond minimum compliance, aiming to be empowering when it comes to gender equality and social inclusion, and where possible supporting transformational change. 

Embrace Africa will prepare activities monthly, quarterly, annually and final narrative reports to document progress against plans.  The organization will make use of the reports to inform decision making process for efficient and effective programme cycle management. The reports will also be used to inculcate programmatic and institutional learning for better performance. EMBRACE AFRICA will also report on major success stories available in the community as a result of project activities.

 During the implementation of this project, EMBRACE AFRICA will comply with the specific requirements of representing our work. By using visual, textual, and other available communication channels; communication materials will be made in both English and Swahili language.  Consultations will be done in case anything arises during the communication of project activities to eliminate any difficulties that might arise to slow down the activities of the project and its objectives. 

At Embrace Africa we believe that Monitoring and evaluation is an important tool for making informed decisions, adaptive management and institutional learning. Monitoring and evaluation will be one of the key functions to ensure that the organization and its programs are efficiently and effectively managed to the expectations of key stakeholders and especially our beneficiaries. Embrace Africa will develop a monitoring and evaluation framework that will be instrumental in tracking progress towards realization of its goals and objectives. Embrace Africa will conduct quarterly monitoring visits to the program sites to assess progress and collecting success stories on how beneficiaries are being benefited by the program.

Sustainability is an integral part of our project. We aim to be able to support the activities of the project beyond the first grant. That is why we have designed training and skills provision to the beneficiaries of this project. We have factored training women and equipping them with skills that will enable the trained to produce various items apart from the reusable pads. We will train women on making school uniforms and other school related products so to sell and become part of our income generating activities. We will also continue partnering with our donors, we will seek contracts with the government and private businesses to get tenders to produce items that can be sold and raise income. So our approach will combine many revenue streams to strive for sustainability of our organization and projects.

We have already started identifying the women whom we want to engage in our training programmes. Our Community development officer has been going around the villages to identify needy families which have women and young ladies who are capable of joining our project as trainees to acquire skills to produce items that can be sold and make income for themselves and for the organization. So far we have not received any external funding and for the time we have been in operation we have been using internally contributed funds from Board members' earnings to carry on our activities.