pme donates: Girl's Menarche educates about menstruation
According to a national study, 28 percent of adolescent girls in Uganda do not go to school due to menstruation-related problems. Sharitah wants to change that. In 2018, she founded the non-profit organization Girl's Menarche in Jinja, Uganda's fourth-largest city, to educate young women about menstruation and break down the stigma in society. To support its numerous projects, the pme Familienservice donated 12,500 euros to the initiative last year. We spoke to Sharitah about her commitment and everyday challenges.
Why did you found Girls' Menarche?
This was after I witnessed a young woman in a matatu (cab) getting her first period. Instead of helping her, she was insulted and stigmatized. This experience inspired me to found Girl's Menarche . The organization is committed to providing sustainable menstrual health solutions to communities in Uganda through the provision of products, gynecological support, advocacy and education. This ensures that menstruating women participate in school, family and community activities on all days of the month.
Why is menstruation education so important in Uganda?
Poor menstrual management affects many menstruating women worldwide, especially in low- and middle-income countries. The challenges include lack of information, lack of access to suitable and sustainable menstrual products and hygienic changing facilities, lack of gynecological care, insufficient social support and pressure from taboos, which leads to psychosocial consequences such as fear and shame.
This can affect a girl's ability to thrive and succeed at school and in the community. What strategies do you use to combat taboos and myths around menstruation?
We initiate youth-friendly projects that promote inclusion, openness and creativity, e.g. menstruation parties, youth forums, music, creative art ("I create period"), open conversations, non-judgmental talks, menstruation debates and use social media campaigns.
Which projects have you already successfully implemented?
We have already implemented several projects, for example:
Outreach to communities and schools: Since the project's inception, we have reached more than 100 schools and communities in Uganda, educating both menstruating and non-menstruating women about menstruation and distributing more than 20,000 menstrual products and reusable and disposable sanitary pads.
Menstruation parties: We have organized two menstruation parties, 2020 and 2022, which are events that bring together different communities, young people and creatives to celebrate periods. Young people dress up in period costumes, create period songs, poems and art.
Menstrual Santa: Every year on December 24, we distribute menstrual products wrapped as Christmas presents in the slums of Uganda. So far, we have given away 1,200 menstrual products.
We also ran online campaigns such as "Let's talk Period" and "I create Period", which involved people around the world in order to reduce stigmatization.
How do you use the donation from pme Familienservice ?
This enables us to provide financial support for several projects at once: the menstrual parties, community and school outreach work, menstrual clubs, celebrations for International Menstrual Hygiene Day, the purchase of equipment for the youth sewing center and the Girl's Clinic.
The initiative educates young people in schools.
What is the Girl's Clinic and what is its aim?
The "Girl's Clinic" is a sexual and reproductive health program. It was developed to close the health and information gap for girls between the ages of eight and 24 in relation to the various menstrual complications and disorders. The aim is to provide girls in rural communities with adequate professional gynecological health care, but also to create safe spaces for open conversations and professional counseling, as well as to develop learning materials and study guides.
What do you hope to gain from this?
We expect to improve access to specialized healthcare for girls in rural areas, reach 5,400 girls and young women in 72 schools and 24 communities, and last but not least: We want to create a community of girls and young women who experience healthier menstruation free from stigma and support each other.
Why is it so difficult to educate people about menstruation in Uganda?
In Uganda, the healthcare system has not yet developed to the point where it can provide the care demanded by the general public. This is still a challenge, as the national budget prioritizes other sectors when allocating development funds. There are very few health facilities that serve a large number of people. Unfortunately, these few health centers are also not fully equipped to provide all services.
In evaluating all the community and school outreach that Girl's Menarche has conducted in recent years, girls have expressed complaints that turned out to be signs and symptoms of menstrual disorders (such as dysmenorrhea, amenorrhea, menorrhagia) and would have required specialized professional treatment. However, this is not offered in the public health facilities in their neighborhood. These girls were not treated and still have severe discomfort with every menstruation because their families cannot afford private treatment for their daughters.
What successes have you had in recent years?
For example, we registered with the NGO authority (the Non-Governmental Organizations Bureau is a government agency responsible for registering, regulating and monitoring non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country, editor's note), which gave us official approval and certification as a non-profit organization. We have acquired a plot of land on which we plan to build a sewing center. We have also participated in various large global projects with different organizations. Another highlight was the organization of the first period party in Uganda.
For more menstrual education in Uganda: Girls Menarche has already achieved a lot.
What other projects are you planning for the future?
We would like to build a center that includes both a youth center and a sewing center.
It will provide numerous opportunities for young people and create a platform for them to express their views and share ideas to change their communities. We would also like to open wellness centers for women in different areas of Uganda to increase the availability of menstrual products and improve access to reusable and biodegradable sanitary pads produced at our sewing center.
In addition, we want to use national menstrual debates to create a larger platform where young people and the public can talk openly about their periods and their bodies. Perhaps we can persuade politicians to prioritize the issue of reproductive health.
We want to set up girls' clinics in different regions of Uganda so that young women throughout the country have access to gynecological care. We also plan to introduce period banks to encourage families to save for menstrual products and promote financial independence and free choice of products for menstruating women. Finally, we want to publish manuals and books on the subject of periods and menopause.
What would you like to see for menstrual health and education in Africa?
No stigmatization worldwide, not just in Africa, so that everyone can talk openly about menstruation. No one should have to choose between food and menstrual products. It would be ideal if all people, regardless of their gender, learned about menstruation at a young age in schools. I hope that we can publish children's books in different languages about our bodies and the changes they go through. I would also like to see the abolition of taxes on menstrual products and their free provision in schools, especially in rural areas.
Social commitment of the pme Familienservice
Whether in refugee aid, projects for children or the homeless - many team members at pme Familienservice volunteer in their free time. The pme Familienservice also supports social projects in Germany and around the world.
In 2023, the company donated a total of 55,000 euros to five charitable organizations that work every day to help disadvantaged people, children and young people, or on climate and cultural issues, among others.
All 2000 team members had the opportunity to submit suggestions for social projects that they thought were particularly worthy of support. The associations with the most votes received a donation to enable them to implement their projects.
