Dignify Me

Specific Problem 

Our solution currently addresses the problem of period poverty amongst young girls in underserved communities which has directly impacted their school attendance, school performance and overall learning outcome. It also addresses the problem of sanitary product affordability and lack of economic empowerment for young women. 

Scale of the Problem

According to World Bank, as many as 500 million people across the globe lacks access to basic menstrual products and adequate facilities for Menstrual Health Management (MHM). 

In Nigeria, over 37 million girls and women cannot afford menstrual hygiene products. According to UNICEF reports, the high cost of disposable sanitary pads places them out of reach for many young girls and women, with about 46% of the female population estimated to be living in period poverty.

This contributes to school absenteeism rates as high as 23%, causing many girls to miss up to 5 days of school per month and resulting in overall lower academic achievement. Use of unsanitary materials like cloth scraps, grass, paper and more as makeshift sanitary pads has also been linked to a high prevalence of reproductive health issues. A 2018 study found 31.5% of Nigerian girls experience menstrual disorders, likely caused by poor menstrual hygiene.

These clearly shows the enormous impact of period poverty on young girls especially with regards to their education and learning. Hence, millions of young girls from across the country are heavily undermined by the poor or lack of access to sanitary products that will enable them experience their period with dignity. 

Additionally, cultural taboos and stigma are contributing factor to the problem as it forces girls to isolate themselves during menstruation, limiting their mobility and opportunities. In most Nigerian homes, discussions around puberty remains a taboo and many young girls experience menstruation for the first time without adequate knowledge and information on how to handle their menstrual cycle. This makes them more oblivion of the appropriate ways and means of taking care of themselves when their periods begin.  Hence the conscious effort in our solution to include educational materials to mitigate this problem.

Notably,133 million Nigerians are multi-dimensionally poor. With the growing inflation, food insecurity and instability, the number is bound to increase. This is because while prices skyrocket, earnings remains stagnant, and many young girls and women are unable to afford sanitary pads as family income and livelihood is threatened.

There is a clear need for affordable, sustainable menstrual solutions to address period poverty, school absenteeism, health issues and environmental damage. Accessible sanitary products can help uphold menstrual dignity, empowering young girls academically and women economically.

Dignify Me is a social business developed to cater to the sanitary needs of young schools girls in other to reduce period poverty and to empower young women by providing skills training and employment opportunities to manufacture sanitary products locally. It adopts a holistic approach to combating period poverty which combines providing access to sanitary products, providing access to educational materials, providing access to support for the young girls, providing affordable sanitary products and economic benefits to women. 

Our current pilot solution the Dignify Me's Girls Period Kit is designed to contain all the sanitary products that will be manufactured at scale for the local market. In producing the period kit, the kit bag is made of a reusable material and is designed to hold the sanitary products and items that make up the kit. Each Kit contains sets of sanitary pads, sanitary pants, washing soap, manual period tracker, and educational material. While the sanitary pads, pants and soap were bulk purchased for the pilot, we developed the manual period tracker, kit bag and educational materials.  Each of the items serves different purposes and have different impacts on the overall wellbeing of the girl child.

The sanitary pads take care a girls' period during and after school hour.  Meanwhile, our solution is moving to design and provide reusable pads that can last for 3years and above.

The Sanitary cotton pants helps to ensure that in taking care of their period, young girls have access to neat panties for a better menstrual hygiene.

The Washing soap helps young girls practice healthy menstrual practices like hand washing after using the toilets in school or at home too.

Manual period tracker is a calendar-like item designed to help young girls learn and adequately track their periods every month. It is also designed to help them keep track of their flow frequency and better understand how their body works.

Another important aspect of our solution is the educational material which contains information on how to use the kit effectively, education on period myths and taboos, ways to effectively use the manual period tracker and best menstrual practices both during and after periods. These information are also depicted using visual illustration and leveraging animation to drive home the messages. We leverage the animation technology to design a very unique booklet for the young girls. Also the booklet contains support helpline that further gives young girls access to more information on SRHR, report cases of sexual abuse and seek general help on their overall wellbeing.

Our solution aligns with UN Universal Periodic Review recommendations including:

a. Improving availability and access to sanitary products for women and girls (A/HRC/32/9 - 122.101)

b. Investing in women’s skills development and economic empowerment (A/HRC/32/9 - 122.102)

c. Increasing menstrual health education to counter stigma (A/HRC/32/9 - 122.103)

d. Expanding access to sexual health services (A/HRC/32/9 - 122.43)

Our locally-driven solution intensifies tackling period poverty, allows women to take charge of production and distribution, improving access and affordability, and empowering women.

Who Our Solution Serves

The Dignify Me's Girl Period Kit serves young girls within the ages 10-18 in public schools. This demography often comes from underserved communities heavily impacted by poverty and poor living conditions. It also serve the women in the community by providing alternative and affordable sanitary products in the local market through the production and sale of our sanitary products.

Our Solution's Impact

Encourage School Attendance: Dignify Me Kit is targeted at reducing the school absenteeism among young girls which is often times a direct route to school drop-out. According to UNICEF, 7.6 million girls are out of school in Nigeria. Hence, through our solution, more girls have the opportunity to attend and finish school. This also becomes a springboard to achieving even greater educational feats and developing their lives.

Better School Performance: Our solution also enables young girls perform better in school as it drastically reduces missed classes, and discomfort that comes with poor menstrual product and hygiene practices. 

Reduces Vulnerability to Infections: As most of our solution's beneficiaries are exposed to using unsanitary products for their periods, they are often times vulnerable to infections that affects their health and undermine their active participation in school and even social activities. Hence, our solution helps keep young girls safe, healthy and dignified.

Promote Knowledge and Support: Through our solutions, we equip young girls with the right information and knowledge with regards to their reproductive health which helps in improving the outcome of the sexual and reproductive health experience. We equally tackle and demystify the taboos inherent in their communities thereby helping them in making healthy life choices. Also, our support helpline create further room for more engagement with the young girls, giving them a sense of belonging and providing them with further help as required.

Boost Self Esteem: Through our solutions, young girls develop positive self awareness and are eager and willing to take on the world. Experiencing their period in dignity creates a unique sense of self that eschews timidity and reduces their vulnerability to activities such as sexual harassment - as they are sometimes exposed to seeking for help from the opposite sex -which affects their self esteem.

Alternative Product

With the growing inflation and rising cost of goods, we provide alternative products for women by growing the business towards mass production of the sanitary cotton pants and reusable pads. 

Women Empowerment

By training and recruiting young women as workers in the production workshop, our solution provides economic benefits and empowers them.

By addressing the sustainable development goal 4 (quality education) and goal 5 (gender equality) our solution directly helps young girls in leading a healthy life with the opportunity to thrive like their male counterparts.

Our team comprises of young women passionate and committed to promoting the interest of women and girls and improving their wellbeing. Over the past 8 years, through our She Needs to Know training on sexual and reproductive health and rights, we have impacted the lives of many young girls across different communities. These awareness programs and direct engagement with young girls in these communities have propelled a unique value exchange and led to the establishment of trusted relationships between young girls who are our direct beneficiaries, school authorities and also the ministry of education who consistently partner with us in delivering this services. 

Interestingly, the Dignify Me's Girl Period Kit is an innovation created from the numerous feedbacks received from young girls in different schools from different communities during our She Needs to Know awareness program. By consistently engaging young girls at different times, their concerns, questions and suggestions has continually impacted the design of the kit, including the items that make up the kits. As we value their satisfaction, we created a session during our training programs that directly seeks to know their core and recent needs and these inputs shapes or planning and designing of the kit.

We also work closely with schools to assess how these products affects their education and uses relevant feedbacks, recommendations and lesson learned to drive continuous improvement of the solution. Through our partnership with the Ministry of Education District VI Lagos, we continuously liaise with specific personnel to ensure that our products meets the standard of the government and is safe to be used by the girls. Hence, their assessment and inputs further shapes our work and helps in decision making as regards developing our solutions. 

Therefore, there is a wholistic engagement approach with the communities and beneficiaries to ensure that the kit meets the needs of our beneficiaries and at the same time achieves the right results.

The Dignify Me Girl's Period Kit has been distributed to 200 young girls in two different schools. 100 kits were distributed to 100 young girls in Itolo Girls Junior Secondary School Surulere Lagos while another 100 kits were distributed to 100 girls in Eric Moore Secondary school Surulere, Lagos.

As a product at the pilot, the first engagement is a pilot test of the kit and its impact vis a vis challenges with regards to the health and educational wellbeing of the young girls. It is therefore not for sale at the current stage. 

While it is being developed as a social business, emphasis is currently on ensuring growth and scaling into the local market for sustainability.

Our solution provides sustainable response to period poverty for young girls in schools and gives them the opportunity to learn, grow and become. It tackles 70% of menstrual health and hygiene management issues for young girls.

It aims to uniquely empowers local young women to be in charge of the entire production and distribution of Dignify Me products. By making pads, pants and other items locally with sustainable materials, we bypass costly imports providing income opportunities for women.

The direct community-based approach also allows for culturally-tailored menstrual education that destigmatizes periods. This holistic, grassroots model tackles period poverty while uplifting women and girls educationally and economically.

Additionally, the inclusion of visual illustration and cartoon-like animation is an innovative approach to draw better attention and interest to the reading material as most young people today have less attention span but are easily drawn to pictures and drawing that conveys a message. 

On the other hand, the additional support helpline on the material leverages communication technology to further attend to the need of young girls and ensuring that at every point in time, they have answers to their concerns and questions while building a community and database of product users.

We adopt two models, which are B2C - business to consumers who are the women in the communities as we intend to grow and expand into the market. The second model is B2B, however 'B' here is not businesses rather represents beneficiaries who are the underserved young girls and the main stakeholders of the business. They make up the social impact aspect of the business and the main reason for which the social business was established.

Next Year

Market Expansion and Outreach:

We will increase the reach and availability of Dignify Me's Girl Period Kit to underserved young girls and also increase production of our sanitary products – reusable pads, sanitary cotton pants and other items to the local markets. To achieve this, we will collaborate with government education ministry and schools, to distribute kits. We will also develop partnerships for cost-effective manufacturing and distribution to the local market.

Education and Awareness:

We will raise awareness about menstrual hygiene using educational booklet. We will also increase printing of these booklets as a revenue generation product to be sold to private schools, presented for government contracts to be available to all schools in the state and on ecommerce sites like Amazon. This can be achieved by implement educational programs, workshops, and awareness campaigns in schools and communities leveraging our existing She Needs to Know program. We will also process a copyright to enable us better market the booklet to other schools, government and potential customers on Amazon anywhere around the world.

Affordability and Accessibility:

By exploring cost-effective production methods, we will be able to ensure affordability and accessibility of sanitary products making it easier to grow the business while ensuring the distribution of the sanitary kits to underserved young girls. Others strategy to achieving affordability and accessibility includes bulk purchasing, government subsidies and establishing distribution networks in remote areas.

Employment for Women

By successfully equipping the production center, we will train and recruit 10 young women as workers which will improve their economy.

Next Five years

Sustainability and Environmental Impact:

We aim to minimize the environmental footprint of disposable pads and as such will scale investment in the production of eco-friendly reusable pads. We will also implement recycling and waste management initiatives by partnering with fashion houses to source fashion wastes which can be repurposed into beautiful, well patterned and breathable reusable pads and pants.

Employment and Women's Empowerment:

We will provide more employment opportunities for young women by increasing the number of manpower strength. Hence our production units will be able to provide jobs, train and empower women to lead and manage local production centers.

Product Innovation and Customization:

We will continuously improve and customize sanitary products to meet the taste and need of young girls and the local market. Our strategy to achieve this is to invest in research and development to enhance product quality and comfort.

Global Expansion

We will be able to expand the reach of the business beyond Nigeria to Ghana. We will collaborate with international partners, NGOs, and governments to introduce the product in Ghana, establish distribution networks and adapt to local needs.

Health Impact:

We will be able to Improve the overall health and well-being of women and girls by reducing exposure to harmful and uncomfortable disposable pads and also engage with policymakers, non-profits, and advocacy groups to influence policies that promote and support the importance of menstrual hygiene and accessibility.

Our key activities are complete setting up of a production center for growth optimization, training and recruiting young women as workers, expanding our sanitary products into the market, and mass production of the educational booklet. These activities gives room for the growth and scalability of the business which will further lead to a tangible health and educational effect. Beyond impacting the menace of period poverty for young girls, the solution also responds to the global call for women empowerment by creating a platform that empowers women financially which helps in building sustainable economy. Production of our sanitary reusable pads and cotton pants for the local markets creates access to alternative products for women which makes it easier for them to make better choices in accordance to their available purchasing power. In essence, the solution meets the menstrual/sanitary needs of young girls in public schools, financial needs of young women in the community and affordable products for women in the community as well.

More so, we believe that just as the availability and cost of electricity has led to a transition to an alternative source of power that sees to the patronage of renewable energy sources like solar panels, the inflation and cost of sanitary products will trigger a transition to an alternative sanitary product. For this we are positioning the social business to cater to these needs that will evidently catalyze a structural shift in the sanitary business and sexual and reproductive health sector. 

Additionally, the development of the educational booklet that inculcates visual illustrations and cartoon-like animation is a high impact activity that will propel an increased access to quality information for young girls on their sexual health and menstrual hygiene management. It will also create better understanding and learning outcome as a result of the engaging pictures and drawings. The production of the manual period trackers will increase self awareness with reference to menstruation and further reduce the chances of stains on young girls and/or unpreparedness in most cases. 

Our theory of change ensures that young girls in public schools, and young women in the community are essential beneficiaries and part of a sustainable health and educational system. Meanwhile, our solutions transcends temporary period poverty interventions and without it, efforts to mitigate period poverty in our society will continue in the business as usual manner with little or no sustainable impact.

Our solution team currently comprises of six young women between ages 18 to 35. Out of the six members, three are core team members that works directly with our not for profit organization, Impact Her World Foundation. The other three are volunteer team that work closely with the core team on the solution.

The three core team includes the founder, the project manager, and the communications officer.

The volunteer/part time team includes the product designer, the researcher and marketing officer.

We currently do not have full paid staff.

Our organization have been working on the solution for the past three years. The solution began its initial ideation and planning phase in 2020 during the pandemic. 2020 to mid 2021, efforts was focused on developing the concept and strategizing on the best way to pilot/launch the solution. It also saw the onboarding of new team members.

Mid 2021 to 2022, the Dignify Me's Girl Period Kit solution was piloted.

In 2023, leveraging the feedback received from the piloting of the period kit, our team is researching and working on ways to grow and scale the impact of the solution.

Our work approach to DEI includes;

Leadership Commitment: Our organization’s leadership is strongly committed to demonstrating diversity, equity and inclusion by setting the tone and expectations for the work team and emphasizing that DEI is a core value and a priority.

Training and Education: In our work, one of our standard operating procedures is to provide DEI training and education for all working team members both core team and volunteers. This includes understanding unconscious bias, cultural sensitivity, and creating an inclusive workplace culture.

Recruitment and Onboarding: When onboarding new team members, we actively seek out people from underrepresented groups and ensure that the process is free from bias. We are also gender sensitive as we value perspectives and views from everyone irrespective gender. 

Team Resource Groups: We support and will encourage the formation of team resource groups (TRGs) that represent various demographics within the organization. These groups can provide valuable feedback and support.

Inclusive Work Environment: We strive to ensure our workspace is inclusive. Especially as Nigeria is a heterogenous nation with different ethnic and religious practices, we are sensitive to the culture, ethnicity and religious leaning of each member. Hence, we encourage open communication, active listening, and mutual respect among team members. We are also sensitive to people with disability and while we currently do not have one in our team yet, we are open to onboarding them.

Accessibility: While we strive to grow and expand our social business, one of our core aims is to ensure our workplace is physically and digitally accessible to all team members, including those with disabilities.

Supplier Diversity: As we strive to expand into the market, we strive to ensure that we promote supplier diversity by working with a diverse range of vendors and suppliers.

Feedback Mechanisms: We have also established feedback mechanisms that allow work team to express concerns and suggestions related to DEI issues. Act on this feedback to make improvements.

Continuous Improvement: DEI is an ongoing process hence we intend to regularly reassess and refine DEI efforts to ensure that they are effective and align with the organization's goals.

Incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusivity into our organization's work is not just a one-time effort but an ongoing commitment to creating a more equitable and inclusive workplace and society. It requires dedication, resources, and a culture that values and prioritizes these principles.

The business model of our solution combines profit with a strong social and environmental mission. The primary goal is to provide accessible sanitary products to underserved young girls in communities and providing affordable sanitary products to women in the community while addressing critical social issues such as period poverty.

Our business's key mission and social impact is to improve menstrual hygiene, quality education and the overall well-being of underserved girls and women. It aims to reduce the stigma associated with menstruation and promote access to essential hygiene products.

Our product offerings with regards to the local market is predicated on the unit-cost of each product item. The unit-cost of producing a reusable pad is different from the unit cost of producing a sanitary pant. As our business will offer a range of sanitary products our offerings will align with our goal of affordability while ensuring overhead cost is covered.  We intend to ensure that products are priced to be affordable to the target demographic, often with lower profit margins compared to commercial products. Strategies such as cost-effective manufacturing, bulk purchasing, and government subsidies may be employed to ensure affordability. Benefits from the sales of products will be transferred back to the kit production for the underserved girls and for operational costs and sustenance of the business.

Our solution will also focus on sustainable and eco-friendly product options, such as reusable products or biodegradable materials. Reducing the environmental impact of sanitary products is a priority.

As we continually plan to scale, we anticipate conducting an in-depth feasibility study on our ability to become a sanitary raw material supplier to other sanitary manufacturing facilities and then buy the finished products back as branded Dignify Me product. We intend to partner with both local and international manufacturers in our goal to scale leveraging joint venture model.

Our financial sustainability plan includes;

Raising Investment Capital: As we intend to grow and expand our social business we intend to raise investment capitals that will help in increased production of Dignify Me sanitary products. This will enable us scale into the market, leverage internet of things to create an ecommerce site for our business and also expand the reach of our products. While the Dignify Me's Girls Period Kit was funded by grants, we intend to generate revenue from manufacturing Dignify Me sanitary products that will enable us to further develop and distribute the kits in the absence of donations and/or grants.

Contracts with Government: We intend to establish a contract with the Ministry of Education to make our educational materials available to schools within the government's jurisdiction. This will encourage revenue generation for the social business while promoting knowledge of young girls on their sexual and reproductive health. It will also serve the purpose of destigmatization and adequate reporting of issues using the support helpline which can be escalated with relevant government agencies with the informed consent of the beneficiary.

Selling and Marketing of Products: For sustainability, our core aim is to grow and scale by engaging local market with our products. As our products represents an affordable and alternative menstrual solution to women and girls, we will leverage sales of these products to continuously drive the finances of the business which will in turn drive up the expansion and  distribution of the kits to more young girls across Nigeria and other countries in 5 to 10 years.

As we grow, we also intend to source our raw materials locally, in other to ensure our products are cost-effective. Meanwhile we intend to partner with local fashion houses to source fashion waste which can be recycled and/or repurposed into our products. This presents a unique opportunity to getting cheap raw materials and leveraging recycling technology in achieving its aim. We believe that with cheap raw materials from fashion waste, we can increase the revenue of the business while driving environmental/climate change.