Life can be very boring, when all you are doing is accumulating. Accumulating dates, wealth, status, work experience, without giving back to the community. I have always done at least 100 hrs a year on community service be it in the rape rescue center, the children home and the under privileged primary school.
For the last six months i have not had a chance to give back, or as i like to call it pay it forward till i meet a dear friend Kiarie.
The World Bank carried a study that showed that girls miss 10-20% of school days during period school missed due to period, girls complain about poor sanitary products or lack of any. The girls are forced to use pieces of cloths or tissue paper that is bound to stain the clothes and cause them serious infections.
Surprisingly the pioneer of this program has been a Guy, Kiare. He
tells me that this idea came when he was providing first aid equipment
to Baharini Primary School, a community school in Maweni Village in
Kikambala, Kilifi. The issue of girls and their needs touched him that
he reached out to all his friends on a noble idea of all donating a dollar each (Ksh 80), to buy one pack of sanitary towels. thus a noble
cause started.
i was based in Mombasa with Kiarie and i became his number 2, right hand
gal to teach him more on sanitary towels and also help him lobby the
Mombasa market. I acted as a drop off point in Mombasa town, his friends
in Eldoret, Nakuru, Nairobi and Mombasa who act as drop off points also
thus reducing the logistic costs.
So our quest is to collect a million packets of sanitary pads and reach
as many girls as possible and make sure they don’t loose valuable class
time.
Latter on we decided, what is a sanitary towel without anything to hold it, Did these girls have any panties to hold on to the sanitary towels. So came a new campaign to raise money to buy underwear to support the sanitary towel campaign and help keep the girl child in school.
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