Biggest Pads Drive goes gear up

Thembinkosi Khumalo and Charity Chikara, Sunday Life Reporter
WHILE it should be a right for every girl child to have access to sanitary pads, this unfortunately is not always the case.

In some parts of the country some women are said to use cow dung, old clothes, and other items which threaten their health.

The founder of Girl Talk Zimbabwe, Anitta Neshiri, in collaboration with EcoVision has come up with an initiative that aims to restore the dignity of young girls through the donation of sanitary pads.

“As an organisation that seeks to help young girls become the best version of themselves, we did research and discovered that there are some young girls that miss school due to a lack of sanitary wear, some of them get mocked and teased at school due to period accidents, hence 80 percent of these girls suffer from low self-esteem and lack of confidence.

The challenge we faced is that some people still do not take these issues as a serious matter of concern, lack of support system is also another challenge.

But, however, this time some companies and individuals did manage to come through to support the initiative.”

Last Friday, they hosted a classic fundraising dinner that brought prominent influencers, artistes, companies, and creatives under one roof to support the Biggest Pads Drive.

“The public did come through to support the girl child and it was impressive as we managed to raise over 8 000 sanitary pads which we are going to distribute to less privileged girls here in Bulawayo.

The fundraising dinner was a huge success as most socialites, celebrities and companies did come through and most of them made huge contributions,” she said.

The pads will be distributed in different places, especially in remote areas of Bulawayo, schools, and Killarney informal settlement.

Speaking in an interview, the Chief Executive Officer of EcoVision, a water engineering company, Ms Cleopatra Ngwenya, said the dinner’s proceeds were aimed at providing sanitary pads and motivating the underprivileged girls in disadvantaged communities.

She highlighted that besides the sanitary pads, they had noted the unclean water consumed by squatter communities and pledged to supply the Killarney informal settlement with a water purification system.

“Our aim is to distribute the sanitary pads that we already have to squatter camps.

We have also noted that the people have a very poor water supply system, some drink from burst pipes and ponds.

“We as EcoVision are going to donate a portable water purification system called EcoV-roam so that they are able to drink from a cleaner source of water.