Background
Kenya a global leader: The history of girls’ education and feminine hygiene awareness in Kenya
Kenya made educational strides in 2003 when the Ministry of Education launched Free Primary Education. In January 2008 Free Secondary Education was introduced. As a consequence of these two important initiatives, millions more children from the poorest areas of Kenya – where three out of every family are classified as living in absolute poverty – have joined school.
One of the most unique steps made by the Kenya Government was the enactment of The Gender Policy in Education in 2007. This positions the Ministry of Education in the global lead for advancing the rights of girls in education. It is also an initiative which will address other barriers to accessing these rights, with insufficiency in family income and sexual maturation at the forefront of these challenges.
The recently-announced Free Secondary Education will enable the expansion of female secondary education and may be the best single policy for achieving long-term economic growth, if well implemented. Getting girls in school is one challenge, keeping them there is another, with a fundamental key challenge remaining to provide sanitary pads.
After the Girl Child Network (GCN) identified the problem in 2004, they partnered with the Rotary Club of Nairobi South (of which ZanaA founder Megan White is past President) to launch a sanitary pads campaign in February 2006. The issue has now gained international interest. Rotary International and Lions International have partnered with a goal to raise sanitary pads to keep 160,000 girls in school per year, and through a partnership with a local manufacturer, a packet of 12 one-month packets of sanitary pads plus four pairs of underwear are available for 300 Kenya shillings or $4.62. This is the lowest-cost locally-made solution to-date, yet it is not environmentally friendly and produces large amounts of plastic waste.
GCN initially lobbied Proctor and Gamble (P&G) which made a three-year commitment to fund sanitary pads for 15,000 girls for three years. This commitment concluded in March 2009 and was renewed with a $40,000 donation of more pads. Other organizations have taken upon themselves the burden to source sanitary pads for schools they support, yet without proper authorization from the Ministry of Education.
The challenge is now that the method for collection and distribution is haphazard and the plastics used a threat to Kenya’s fragile environment. The campaign is vulnerable to being used by some illicit organizations for personal gain because there no structure to follow up purchases, collection and distribution of the pads for girls in schools. The pads are often purchased from retail stores in small amounts, between 33 and 65 shillings per packet ($0.51-$1.00), inefficiently using financial resources. Imported pads cost slightly less, but these do not benefit the Kenyan economy.
Lastly, the pads being distributed have a significant amount of plastics and other non-biodegradable materials and will soon clog the pit latrines at schools, which will then inhibit girls from attending school as they will not have privacy and will ultimately defeat the very purpose for which they are being distributed. The average girl generates 3.5kg (7 pounds) of sanitary pad waste each year. Moreover, none of these solutions are sustainable. These efforts are limited by the reliance on volunteers for fundraising and lack finacing and personnel to implement an equitable, country-wide distribution.
The Government of Kenya (GOK)’s call for partnership
The Gender and Education Policy in July 2007 includes policy 2.17, “to make the school learning environment gender responsive to sexual maturation” which supports three policy statements:
1. Develop and implement policies on institutional support to sexual maturation, including infrastructure and capacity building of shareholders;
2. Co-ordinate partnerships and facilitate stakeholder participation in the management of sexual maturation; and,
3. Develop modalities for provision of sanitation materials as part of learning materials.
The government has therefore made the major step to protect girls’ education through the provision of sanitary pads, and is calling on partners to help in the implementation of their policy.
In the 2008-09 GOK budget KES 165,000,000 (USD 2.5M) was allocated for sanitary pads.
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