A Civil Organisation called Go All Out whose campaign called Pad the Way Campaign is trying to force the government to supply learners with free sanitary pads at schools.
The organisation in partnership with the North West University’s (NWU) Mahikeng campus on Saturday, took part in an attempt to break a Guinness World record for the longest line of sanitary pads, spanning a distance of 4 kilometres.
Go All Out Representative, Thabang Ramabodu, said sanitary pads must be freely available for all women who need them.
“One of the cases we came across was of a woman who was at a mall, who had an incident and didn’t have pads and money to buy them. So now women can just walk to the two shopping centres that we are working with and get a free sanitary pad in their moment of crisis.
“We will be donating some to the university for students who don’t have sanitary pads. We do hope to now continue this campaign going forward, to make sure that every business area and every school, they have means to support every girl or staff with sanitary pads in case of emergency,” Ramabodu said.
NWU SRC representative, Ella Mogashwa echoed Ramabodu’s sentiments for free sanitation to be available for women in a time of crisis including at public toilets of shopping complexes.
“There is a need to have free sanitary towels in institutions where a young female is going to walk into. So I think this initiative is going to create a platform that will ensure that this conversation starts, of having free sanitary towels in South Africa,” said Mogashwa.
One of the learners, Tshegofatso Tladinyane, said some learners miss school because they don’t have sanitary pads.
“Some girls use washable pads, so this causes them to stay at home during their periods until they are done with their periods. You can’t always wash your pads while you’re at school. As a result, most girls miss the most important lessons at school, and some even miss exams. So this initiative will really make a huge impact on girls, especially girls in rural areas who can’t even afford to buy them. It will restore a girl child’s dignity,” Tladinyane said.
“People just find it funny for a male to try and stop period poverty. They think it is a challenge that only females should face. And what really surprised me is that even some elders criticised this campaign saying periods are supposed to be a girl’s secret,” Nhuta said.
The campaign managed to collect about 100 000 sanitary pads and will see more than 60 000 sanitary pads donated to schools from shopping malls.
