By MIA KLITSAS, founder of Moxie.
I’m sitting on the plane, homeward bound, from what has been one of the most intense and overwhelming yet exciting and happy experiences of my life.
I’ve been in Uganda for the last week with our ‘Pads for Pads’ initiative, whereby we are providing reusable sanitary pads to schoolgirls who otherwise would not have access to them. Many of these girls will miss up to 20% of their school year (or drop-out altogether) as a result.
During my stay, I visited three schools in some of the most remote villages in Uganda, where many girls cannot even access reusable sanitary pads, let alone afford them. Most of the girls I met use old clothes or dirty rags when they have their periods. This, as you can imagine, is not only incredibly uncomfortable and embarrassing because leakage is almost guaranteed, but it’s also unhygienic.
With a chunk of the profits generated through the sales of our Moxie products in Australia over the last few months, we provided 500 girls with a year’s supply of reusable sanitary pads each over the past week – locally made by our partners at AFRIpads – plus menstrual and sexual reproductive education. By the end of the year, that number of reusable sanitary pads will jump from 500 to 6,000. These girls now have the confidence to continue their schooling, uninterrupted by their periods and as they so rightly deserve.
I have met young Ugandan school-girls that want to be doctors, business-women, teachers… each of them want to be SOMETHING.
I did not meet ONE single girl that said she wanted to be ‘nothing’.