Girls from Adab Islamic happily displaying their pads
The Young Women Leaders Network (YWLN) is embarking on a menstrual hygiene project dubbed ‘gift a sanitary pad to the girl-child’.
The year-long project seeks to distribute free sanitary pads to 10,000 girls aged 10-15 in the sub-urban and rural schools and train them on menstrual hygiene management.
YWLN is a non-governmental organisation with the mission of educating, supporting and empowering the girl-child and women from the sub-urban and rural communities through health education and personal development.
The project which began in December 2017 was inspired by the Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs) three to ensure an inclusive and equitable society.
Since it commencement, 250 girls from two schools in Nima and Mamobi communities have benefitted from it.
Lailatu Abdulai, a certified midwife and the health coordinator of YWLN, said a key societal challenge in “Ghana is that most girls do not have knowledge about menstrual cycle before experiencing it. Hence, they are folded in a pool of shame to not easily talk about it to even their parents.”
“This exposes the girl-child to number of stigmatization which is resulting to the girl-child being absent in school during her menstrual period. This is the problem the Young Women Leaders Network is solving,” she said.
Ms. Abdulai pointed out that the project would improve school attendance among girls between the ages of 10 and 15 years in schools, increase access to 10,000 adolescent girls with sanitary pad and comprehensive menstrual hygiene management knowledge and risk, create awareness of teenage pregnancies and other sexual-related diseases among in-school and out of school girls between the ages 10 to 15 years.