Thanks to the Curry Stone Design Community

October 15, 2010
New York, NY

On behalf of our SHE team, thank you to the Curry Stone Design Community. And thank you to the Rwandan communities we work in, our Board, Advisors, pro-bono Consultants, Volunteers and She Supporters who believe that addressing girls' obstacles to schooling is vital to the well-being of our world. We are humbled by this social design award recognizing our work in health and hygiene education, advocacy, and our potential to drive economic change through local business development. This award will allow us to launch our first manufacturing facility in early 2011.

Check it out:


For more news please check out the latest news:

New York Times Highlights SHE's Eyes on the Prize | Design That Does Good October 13, 2010

Curry Stone Award Site: SHE wins Curry Stone Design Prize October 13, 2010

Design Observer: Sustainable Health Enterprises Wins Prestigious Curry Stone Design Prize
October 13, 2010

Are you the next SHE Fellow this Fall?

We’re looking for a highly-motivated, experienced, and passionate SHE Fellow who wants to work with an innovative, international award winning social venture, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), to change the world! This position is a full or part-time volunteer position working in NYC for 10 weeks.

What will you do? Everything from prepping for the Clinton Global Initiative, researching best practices in social entrepreneurship, helping roll out new intiative in Rwanda, spearheading, editing, laughing, changing the world!

Please send resume, cover letter, and answer to the questions, "Why SHE? and why you?" in an email with “SHE Fall Fellow” in the email heading to supportshe@SHEinnovates.com by midnight, September 6th.

About Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE): www.SHEinnovates.com

Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) is a social venture using market-based approaches to address social problems in developing countries. Its first initiative is addressing girls' and women's lack of access to affordable sanitary pads when they menstruate causing them to miss school and/or work--up to 50 days per year. SHE is helping women start up their own businesses to distribute and eventually manufacture affordable and eco-friendly sanitary pads made of local materials (e.g., banana fibers). Echoing Green, one of the premier seed funders of social enterprises, named SHE 1 of the 20 most innovative social ventures worldwide (out of 1,500 applicants), Harvard Business School named SHE founder, Elizabeth Scharpf, its first Social Enterprise Fellow, President Clinton recognized Elizabeth Scharpf at the 2009 Clinton Global Initiative, and Nicholas Kristof featured SHE in the most emailed Dec 2009 NYTimes article as one of a handful of innovative and meaningful organizations.

Election Day!

August 9, 2010
Kigali, Rwanda

Greetings to you all and welcome you back to this page, with the latest in the SHE political world. By the way, no business is without politics, unfortunately this revelation just came to me!!! and the reason for which am saying this is because i have taken leave from office (not that i did not need vacation), thanks to the presidential campaigns keeping all Rwandese on our toes, less work and more campaigning for presidential hopefuls.

However, the exception to this campaign is that no candidate is pulling the other down as it is in all campaigns i have seen, all the candidates are talking about their manifestos and what they are willing to do for the people of Rwanda. It's really about keeping the people together and not who is better than who, which makes this a unique one, am yet to analyze the reasons why this is so, might be a trend all future campaigns want to take-- BE AWARE OF RWANDA, THE TREND SETTER. HERE WE COME!!!

The campaign is a heated one, with mammouths of crowds pulling up behind their respective candidates, and thanks to the empowerment of women, we have a woman senator running for presidency, talk about Trend Setters!!! Ears and yes eyes are wide open to promises of increasing teachers salaries, a factor that has remained hitherto uncommon to most African teachers, so when one declares that teachers salaries will increase,and by how much by the way? Not sure, let's wait and see as I stand in awe!

This Monday, we all go to the polls, to choose our next president and trust us to choose wisely. So if you want to stay in business,promote health and sustainable development, please be with us that we use this opportunity to show the world that we can set trends even unknown to us. Meantime i will be enjoying my vacation,lying somewhere on a beach and reading some book and magazines! Wish me luck!

Julian, SHE COO

Dancing to the Tune of ‘Breaking Silence on Menstruation’

July 12, 2010
House of Parliament, Kigali, Rwanda



Hey if you thought women and men (including parliamentarians, Ministry permanent secretaries, school girls, Int’ NGOs staff) marching from one city centre to the another with the aim of ‘Breaking silence on Menstruation and advocating for abolition of taxes on Sanitary pads was up to no good, take a deep breath and read on:

-The Rwanda Government recently approved the 2011 budget, including a remarkable $35,000 towards the purchase of sanitary pads for the schools in the poorest districts around the country, not to mention that there is an ongoing exercise to construct separate latrines for both boys and girls.

-On the day of the march to present, over 10,000 packets of sanitary pads have been collected from community members (including Rwandan diaspora) to be distributed to rural school girls who lack them.

-The same group of women, men and girls who participated in the march, have organized a sanitary pad distribution exercise a few days from now where the collected sanitary pads will be distributed to schools that lack them most, in each region of the country. This will be coupled with health and hygiene sessions with the students and teachers and sharing best practices around menstrual health.

The Minister of Sports and Culture (who was the guest of honor at the march) has a famous saying in the local language ‘ibyiza Birimbere’ loosely translated as, ‘Greater things lie ahead.’ I totally agree with him.


Julian, SHE COO