This very newspaper you are reading right now could someday be used by a young girl as a sanitary pad.
But one woman is on a mission to eradicate period poverty, one sanitary product at a time.
After hearing about the plight of two girls in her community in 2019 her curiosity has sparked an entire organisation not only to keep girls in schools but ensuring they are educated on menstrual health.
Westridge local Lindsay Adams is now also working on first-of-its-kind technology to alleviate this plight.
“These two young girls did not attend school and soon a week went by,” she related. “I was very curious to know why they had not attended school and they were very forthcoming that they did not have pads, so they stayed at home because it was embarrassing. I never dreamt that this conversation would turn into this.”
Adams soon discovered that this was a widespread problem, not only in Mitchell’s Plain but all over the province and country.
“The stories you hear. These girls are using rags, newspaper and toilet paper. This catapulted me into action. I need to do something because not all of us are fortunate to have these things. It is not a luxury, it is a necessity.”
#Againstperiodpoverty has since grown with the support and donations of private donors, church groups, local ward councillor Ashley Potts and aligned other organisations.
While Adams had been pursuing this mission since 2019 this organisation was officially launched last year. Prior to this registration, she had been operating solely from her pocket.
“This is bigger than me,” she says. “I needed to be the change.”
Adams is now mobile and has taken her aid outside the borders of Mitchell’s Plain, visiting schools across the province in areas such as Ceres, Khayelitsha and Rylands, also visiting religious organisations and anyone who needs her assistance.
“The story that really hit home is that there is no menstrual health. I do not just hand over sanitary goods. I realised that many girls don’t understand much about their periods.
“We do an educational talk and girls can ask questions.”
“When I ask them if they would talk to a male teacher about their period, they always start out saying ‘no’, but after the second visit, this changes,” Adams said.
“The programme is working to make these girls more comfortable about their periods and menstrual health.”
To date, she has reached over 7200 girls. However, she is still limited due to the number of donations received.
“There is still a stigma attached to periods and we hope to break that, one pad and one talk at a time.”
Working as an interior designer for a Dubai-based property development group, Adams devotes as much time as possible to the cause, with an exciting new project on the cards.
She plans to launch a sanitary pad vending machine and the first school in Mitchell’s Plain already chosen.
Now work continues to raise the much-needed funding to realise this dream.
Designed to operate on a unique token system, the sanitary pads will be dispensed for each token but remain free of charge for girls.
“When you walk in the malls, you see a vending machine for cigarettes, condoms, chips, cooldrink and other items. So, the idea came to me, why not a vending machine for sanitary products?
“This machine will be accompanied by an incinerator to process the pads immediately as they take around 700 years to degenerate at the landfills. The goal is to have a vending machine at every school because the need is so great.”
Each unit – consisting of the vending machine and incinerator – costs R30 000.
“There are more than seven million schoolgirls who menstruate every month,” Adams said. “Sex is a choice and condoms are free. Periods are not a choice.”
Various government departments do have sanitary pad donations to schools. The additional scrapping of tax on sanitary products is also a step in the right direction, says Adams, but more work needs to be done as even this is out of reach for many.
Adams accepts donations of all forms of sanitary wear – including reusable and disposable or donations of funding toward purchasing of organic sanitary pads and the vending machine project.
“If I can touch and change the life of even just one girl and keep one girl in school, then I am happy.”
- For more information, or to donate, call 073 398 8575 or email lindsay@againstperiodpoverty.co.za
