Resuable Pad Program

Menstruation is a natural fact of life with a monthly occurrence received by girls at the age of 11 years, earlier or later. The proper management of this bodily function is quite challenging, uncomfortable, expensive and impossible for many girls and women and improvising is the order of the day.
Materials like dried grass wrapped in polythene bags, old new papers, rags, soil rapped in polythene bags, banana leaves, fibers, local clothing materials like back cloth locally known as “Mitooma” in Lunyankole and “Lubugo” in Luganda are desperately being used to manage period.
For others, suicidal methods like siting in sand during menstruation, siting on an ash pile in efforts to soak/absorb blood, sitting in a trench of dirty running water during your first period are being implored and innocently adopted by many.
Such harmful and unhealthy alternatives are made popular by lack of information (To be corrected through the awareness program) and scarcity of appropriate sanitary products.
Most families and communities in Uganda are struggling every day to meet the basic needs of life like food, surviving on less than $1 and therefore buying pads is considered a luxury they can’t afford nor think of and how can we blame them!
This silent pandemic is not given the attention it needs and with it comes other challenges like transitional sex for pads, a spike in HIV/AID, early pregnancy and therefore is need for an INNOVATIVE, COST & ENVIRONMENT FRIENDLY, DURABLE, SAFE solution to mitigate this crisis.
AT teen candle initiative, we without a doubt believe reusable sanitary pads can bring about the metamorphic change and impact we need for safe, easy and worry free menstruation days.
A reusable pad can be washed, dried and sanitized by the power of the sun and used again for a minimum of one year with just soap and clean water making them highly cost-effective. To put it into perspective, 10 ready to use pieces of re-usable sanitary pads are 4 times more affordable than a year’s supply of disposal costs and this is only in the short run.
This program with your support seeks to end the scarcity of sanitary pads through construction of a sewing studio capable of massive production of more than 800 pieces per day to be given out for free.
The program also seeks to provide a free learning environment for making re-usable pads as means to boost the social-economic welfare of people in the community.