Time to catch up, better late than never.

I have been very remiss in my blogging. It was December last year....... Well, no excuses. But I would like to give you a series of sketches of what I have been up to, starting with Pads.  You can expect further posts in the coming week or so on the Deaf, the Radio, Farming and Future Plans. 

Pads Project

This school had a 241 girls over 12. In the foreground is the stack of knickers needed for each to get four pairs. 

The main project I am involved with is providing washable sanitary pads for schoolgirls. I have written about this before, so you can scroll down through the blog or link to here or here to get the full low-down.

To date, this year we have visited 16 schools, 11 of which were 1^st time visits. About 1450 girls are now equipped to go confidently to school.

In June we were invited at short notice, by an NGO called ActionAid, to provide pads for the girls of 10 schools at their expense and we have 4 of those remaining to visit in the next two weeks.

Then we can resume visiting our 'old' schools and providing for their 'new' 12 year olds.

This year, by the end of the final term, we should have made and distributed in excess of 10,000 pads and bought and distributed the same number of knickers.

Does it any difference? So far it has proved very difficult to get clear statistics. But anecdotally it is not hard to show and I have yet to come across anyone here who thinks we are wasting our time.

I spoke to a successful woman of around 40 years a few months ago who said that by the time she reached the end of secondary school, she was the only girl in the school. All the others had dropped out for various factors peculiar to gender. Foremost among these was the problems and embarrassment of dealing with periods in a mixed school, without sanitary materials. She was very enthusiastic about this project.