Girls Just Wanna Have...

SHE celebrated the second annual International Day of the Girl (October 11th) in Rwanda and in the U.S. by doing what we do best: making menstruation matter by instigating awareness.

We kicked off celebrations with a call-in show on Radio Rwanda. SHE Rwanda COO Julian was featured on Radio Rwanda to discuss how SHE LaunchPads and our education and advocacy initiatives are help to advance girls' improvement in education. The most popular segment of the program was when listeners called in with their own questions. Guess who called in with the most questions: men! Yes, men called in not only to ask questions, but to declare their support for SHE!

The celebrations continued in Rwanda when SHE's Marketing Officer Gerardine attended at FAWE and UNFPA's Day of the Girl event in Rubavu. Students performed poems, songs, artwork, and skits that focused on this year's Day of the Girl theme, "Innovations in Girls' Education". The Executive Secretary of the Kanama sector also spoke and congratulated ongoing efforts by parents, teachers, and other stakeholders for investing in the girls' and supporting efforts to end gender-based violence.


The SHE Global team celebrated Day of the Girl too. UNICEF gave us the opportunity to show the world our SHE LaunchPad as an example of great innovation to improve girls' education at their global event along with innovations from the Girl Scouts, Girls Who Code, and Intel/Stanford.

SHE's Connie Lewin and Ali Sugarman, a SHE intern and all-round SHE advocate, showcased our LaunchPad to an audience of 200+ that included Day of the Girl youth advocates, UN, UNICEF, and Plan International leaders, ABC News's David Muir and actress Freida Pinto!

Ali and Connie at UNICEF's Day of the Girl Celebration

Actress Freida Pinto (center, in white dress) was excited about the LaunchPad!

International Day of the Girl may be over, but you can still keep celebrating! Sign the The Girl Declaration, a call to action to put girls at the heart of the post-2015 development agenda.  You can also celebrate by shaking along to Beyonce's "Who runs the world? Girls" too!

The HAHA Beat: SHE's Instigating at work: EALA pushes for affordable pads

Our instigating efforts are paying forward! Thanks to long-time SHE advocate Dr. Odette Nyiramilimo, whom we met with earlier this year (check out our blog post), the East African Legislative Assembly is pushing for cheaper sanitary pads with a resolution to waive value-added taxes (18% in Rwanda) across East Africa!

Check out the article here: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?i=15458&a=69783

Re-visit our blog post about meeting with Dr. Nyiramilimo here: http://sheinnovates.blogspot.com/2013/03/an-end-to-value-added-taxes-is-in-sight.html

SHE will be at the Women Deliver Conference, May 28th - May 30th

SHE will participate in several events during the conference: 

Tuesday, May 28th, 12:00 pm - 12:25 pm, Exhibit Hall 2, Hospitality Suite 2: 

View our SHE28 Campaign Video at Cinema Corner

Wednesday, May 29th, 11:15 am – 11:30 am, Speaker's Corner, Exhibit Hall

Learn more about our advocacy and education initiatives during our industrial-scale pilot from Jackie Mupenzi, SHE's Advocacy and Policy Manager

Thursday, May 30th, 11:00 am - 11:45 am, Exhibit Hall 5
Witness social enterprise in action as SHE's Jackie Mupenzi serves as a judge at the Social Enterprise Challenge

If you can't join SHE at the conference, you can attend Women Deliver 2013 virtually through its website at http://new.livestream.com/WomenDeliver/conference2013 or follow the action via its blog or Twitter using hashtag #wd2013.

The HAHA Beat: Menstrual Talk Hits the Rwandan Airwaves

Hi all,

This is Jackie, SHE Rwanda's Advocacy and Policy Manager, and I am excited to share an update from the HAHA (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) Team. We had our first live radio talk show on May 13th that was co-sponsored by our partners, VSO, to raise awareness on menstrual health issues in Rwanda.

I was joined by my colleague Nadia, SHE's Health and Hygiene Officer, Mukasine Caroline, a member of the Maternal and Child Health Department of the Ministry of Health and Uwimbabazi Sylvie, from the Ministry of Education. 

At the beginning of the talk show, every participant was given time to express what they are doing in terms of supporting girls in to manage this issue; I explained how SHE works in partnership with other partner organizations and government agencies to raise awareness, provide training, and work with schools in order to break the silence around menstruation and menstrual hygiene and also to share best practices of menstrual hygiene management (MHM). SHE also talked about its advocacy in terms of tax exemption so as to have affordable and access to sanitary products.

-    The Ministry of Health talked about how they raise awareness of MHM within its reproductive health sensitization programs, while the Ministry of Education confirmed its support of MHM by promoting the addition of girls’ rooms at schools and its basic requirements at all primary and secondary schools. They also talked about its financial support of MHM through its allocation of sanitation funds to schools.

We changed topics during the talk show to discuss how we menstrual health and hygiene awareness:

• Is menstruation really a challenge in schools?
• What is the response from the Ministry of Health to it?
• What are some of the inputs form the Ministry of Education to address the challenge?
• An overview of menstruation and its current management at the school setting
• Answering the audience's questions around menstruation

Below are some of the questions asked and this clearly shows the menstrual hygiene education is critical and needs to be widespread since taboos and incorrect beliefs around the topic is still an issue: 

• Most parents still consider menstruation as a sickness and often keep their daughters at home. Several of them called and asked whether their daughter is sick or if this something normal. 
• What are those days that one would consider to be safe days in one's menstrual cycle?
• When is it likely for a girl to become pregnant? Is it really safe that if you have sex with a girl during her period, that she will never become pregnant?
• Why is it that some girls experience serious pain during their menstruation while others do not?
•  What are some medicines or ways of reducing the pain during periods?
• Are there some other products that one can use apart from pads during menstruation since pads are expensive?
• Why is it that some women have their period/menstruation but at time do not give birth or never become pregnant?

•       Another person called Maniracyiza, called just to say thanks for the discussion.

-   Based on questions asked from the audience, from the community and some more that were not answered due to time constraints, we would like to raise our voices as a call for action to all other organizations in support of girls' issues to join SHE's efforts in one or all three ways: (1) to raise awareness around MHM; (2) to lobby for policy change in schools as a way of raising MHM knowledge; and (3) to ask policy makers to waive taxes on pads so as to have them accessible and affordable.

Our next steps are to follow up with Radio Rwanda because they agreed to offer us more radio airtime and to host a show about menstrual hygiene again since there were so many questions still unanswered from the public. Exciting!

Thank you,

Jackie 

SHE's Advocacy and Policy Manager

The HAHA Beat: Why Menstrual Hygiene Education Needs to be Girl-Friendly

Check out why Health and Hygiene Officer Nadia thinks that menstrual education is not "girl-friendly" enough and how SHE is instigating for these changes at the school level:

"With the support of VSO Rwanda, SHE conducted menstrual health and hygiene awareness programs across the Ngoma District within the month of March.

In our Rwandan culture, as in other parts of the world, menstruation is still viewed as a taboo, making it difficult for parents, teachers and children comfortable to tackle the matter in details. Some parents would say nothing at all about menstruation or at the very least, would ask someone else to explain menstruation to their daughters, which has resulted in misinformation about menstruation.

Health and Hygiene Officer Nadia at one of our 8 awareness sessions in the Ngoma District. 

With all this confusion about how to properly manage their period, girls miss up to 3-5 school days each month, while their male colleagues proceed with their studies, thus making our young sisters, future mothers and leaders of Rwanda at risk of falling behind at school, having low marks, and not having the same achievements as their brothers.

Students therefore have to rely on teachers for menstrual hygiene education, but all they learn is about the biological changes that occur with the onset of menstruation. Unfortunately, menstrual hygiene management part is not covered within it. Girls, as well as boys, need to have that information, so they are prepared once menses does begin and to take it easy; and most importantly, to know that menstruation is NOT a disease or is something shameful! This was our overview when we lead these awareness workshops.

The fact is increased access to menstrual hygiene education is needed and it needs to be presented in a child and girl-friendly manner. If it’s not done in a girl-friendly approach, girls will continue to receive incorrect menstrual information. Some of the myths or incorrect information that I heard from the girls include:

"If you sleep with a man while menstruating, you will never have painful periods”

or

"If you have sex while menstruating, you will never get pregnant"

These girls’ voices are calling out for SHE support. They have the right to know that menstruation is not a disease or a curse as some people believe - it is a normal physiological process the body undergoes.That is why SHE is instigating for increased access to menstrual education and materials at the national level!

SHE is taking the lead to educate girls about MHM through their teachers and parents. Will you join us? Girls are demanding to 'know more!'

I extend gratitude to the Ngoma District and their schools; as a result we were able to provide our MHM awareness workshop to over 1100 students.

I am also most grateful to the girls and their teachers for talking frankly about menstruation in the school setting with us. Girls, we love you, and we believe you deserve to manage your menses healthy and hygienically."

Cheers,

Nadia Hitimana 

Health and Hygiene Officer"

The HAHA Beat: Ensuring Girls' Rights in Education

A HAHA (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) Update from Advocacy and Policy Manager Jackie Mupenzi:

SHE was invited to attend the annual kick-off meeting of the Girls' Education Working Group. The meeting was hosted by the Wellspring Foundation in Nyarutarama-Kigali.

We had a chance to interact with all of the stakeholders that are invested in improving girl's education. Members include Plan Rwanda (Co-chair), Girl Hub (Co-chair), Rwanda Girls Initiative in Gashora, FAWE, Care International, National Union of Disabilities, VVOB, ActionAID, EDC, Imbuto Foundation, UNICEF and CHF.

We can't wait to collaborate and stay tuned to see what happens!

The HAHA beat: Periodic (haha) Updates from our Health and Hygiene Advocacy team

While our industrial-pilot is in motion, our HAHA team (Health and Hygiene Advocacy) team is also laying the groundwork to ensure long-term access to menstrual hygiene education and products (including our SHE LaunchPad) .

To make sure you're up-to-date on all things health and hygiene-related, check out our blog for The HAHA Beat. Here's the latest from our Advocacy and Policy Manager Jackie.

----------------------
Hi all,

It's been an exciting 2 months for the HAHA team! With Nadia on board, we worked together to lead hygiene education and awareness programs across Rwanda in partnership with VSO. 

Jackie (with mic) leading an advocacy awareness session.
Photo Credit: Perttu Saralampi

Our final awareness program at a youth center in Kigali was one of our most memorable events, namely because we invited 15 students from the Duha Complex School in Rwamagana to perform a skit on menstrual hygiene education! 

The Duha students are one of SHE's biggest fans! We trained senior level students and their teachers about menstrual hygiene and they loved our program so much that they even founded their own SHE student club! 

The Duha students provide menstrual and reproductive health education by writing and performing their own skits that are then performed at school and within the community. It was a great to have youths teach each other via acting!

Bridget Mukanyandwi, a teacher at the Duha School, remarked that the budget allocated for pads was insufficient as not all girls can have access to them. She said some students end up using rags because they can't afford pads and the schools don't receive enough pads for use by their students. 

Mukanyandwi said that most children start their periods around their primary five or at age twelve. She also called upon parents to also play a role in telling their daughters about menstruation early enough and not leave to it all to teachers. 

She also noted that some parents, especially in villages, still hold negative cultural perceptions whereby they believe it's a taboo to talk to their daughters about menstrual health, therefore calling upon them to break the silence and educate their children. 

As a much added benefit to raising national awareness, the New Times Rwanda featured our event and an interview with me. Please check it out: http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/index.php?a=13582&i=15320

More eyes and ears at the national policy level are on menstrual hygiene education. This is great news!

Thank You, 

Jackie

SHE Rockstar of the Month: Tash McCarroll

Editor's note: It's time to debut SHE's Rockstar of the Month. Team SHE is more than our staff; it includes amazing volunteers that share their expertise to help further SHE's mission. Photographer Tash McCarroll (http://www.tashmccarroll.com) joined our staff in Rwanda for a few weeks to capture our work in action during our industrial-scale pilot. Learn more about her time with SHE from the trailblazer herself:

"In my short time with SHE, I experienced the lengths they go to in order to educate, inform and reach as many women, men, boys and girls in Rwanda as possible. My first day with the SHE team we traveled for three and a half hours to the South West of Rwanda to a UN Refugee camp with 17,000 displaced families from North Kivu region in DRC.

The families and women are faced with serious issues of safe hygiene and sanitation with few toilets and lack of running water to many areas of the camp. The toilet facilities like many UN camps are simply constructed tarp longdrop toilets with limited privacy making menstrual health management very difficult).

In a small room 4 x 10m over 30 women tightly packed in with as many babies on backs, knees and 'boobs' to hear the SHE team deliver their important message. While the number was limited due to the size of the space available women had been gathered from different areas of the camp so they could go back and educate others with what they had learnt.

There were many more curious ears and eyes peering and listening from the door, along with several male leaders from the camp. The room was filled with anticipation, ears and eyes fixed ready to absorb any information. Julian delivered information DEBUNKing myths and beliefs around menstruation, educating on what the menstrual cycle was and why both men and women need to have information on this topic.

When Gerardine stepped up with her 'bag of goodies' to show and give demonstrations on use of various types of sanitary items a lot of excitement filled the room and many of the men who were outside came into the room for closer inspection. The room filled with  side conversations, laughter, and then many questions about the various items shown and how they really worked.

'Can I go out and visit someone with a tampon inserted?'
'How does it stay in once its inserted?' 
'Won't it fall out?', 
'Can a teenage girl and a married women use a tampon in the same way?' 
'Could a female condom then be used as a method for menstrual management?'

The SHE team members answered the questions with calm words, sincerity and clarity that the women were relieved and thankful for their time and knowledge gained.

The second time I went with the SHE team we visited the South East of Rwanda and started on a schools education project. This photo series takes you through some of the events on that day with the two schools and children that we met. The remainder of the week they were meeting 8 other schools groups in the district, leaving me confident of the education that so many children who will be better equipped to deal with their own or daughters' menstrual health/hygiene in the future."

SHE Advocacy and Policy Manager, Jackie Mupenzi, delivers information to a group of 250+ students from Kabilizi school, Ngoma District, Rwanda

SHE Junior Marketing Officer Geraldine shows students a sanitary pad and explains how to use it

SHE's newest team member, Health and Hygiene Officer Nadia Hitimana, shares a fun moment with the students when someone answers a question correctly

A student stands to ask one of many questions during the Menstrual Health & Hygiene session. The school children asked many great questions surrounding menstrual health.

A young male student comes up to show what he has learnt about the reusable cup and proudly shows his classmates 

Students gather with great interest as SHE's Jackie and Geraldine show students how a sanitary pad works by pouring some water on it to show absorption

Jackie gives her piece on why menstrual health and hygiene education is important for both boys and girls and DEBUNKs some of the beliefs students have around menstrual cycles.

Gerardine uses a resource in the classroom to answer a question from a student about the days of the menstrual cycle.

Girls and boys students sit focused for over 2 hours receiving information, asking & answering questions and interacting with the SHE Team

Muraho to SHE's Advocacy and Policy Manager Jackline Mupenzi!

Hello SHE supporters out there!!

It is amazing to know and think that there is someone, somewhere, who took time to transform an idea into a reality that will have a positive impact on generations and generations. I am grateful to my colleague, and Founder of SHE, Elizabeth Scharpf, and the entire senior management team.

I would also like to send my regards to all of you and say that I am delighted to be a part of SHE, and its approach to bring a change through society on behalf of those who cannot do it for themselves. There is a saying, which goes like “Communicate better, lead better.” There is no doubt that the most successful people are good communicators and during the few days in ‘SHE’ I am trying to figure out the best way that I can share my attributes for different purposes such as influencing, persuading, informing with a target of addressing girls' and women's lack of access to affordable menstrual pads leading to missed school and/or work, and potentially harmful health.

During my years of working in different government organizations, the procedure that I was used to was the “downward” flow of information whereby instructions on whatever tasks were initiated by the top management then passed all the way down to the technicians. Although this system works, if you find out the reason why most projects fail, it’s because we do not involve the technicians or the lower level management in the project design process. That’s not the same here at SHE with its well organized and challenging way of doing things which requires each of us to set the vision for our role and then to receive feedback from the entire team members to capture any new ideas.   Honestly speaking, this is the best practice, which is kind of challenging, but is really great because it creates a spirit of innovation, creativity and above all, accountability when it comes to our tasks, especially during the implementation process.

In brief, I thank my new colleagues here in Rwanda, Julian, SHE COO in Rwanda, and also Sylvere and Gerardine for their warm welcome to the team and ideas.

Mupenzi Fesi Jackline ( Jackie)

Advocacy and Policy manager