Access to Sanitary Towels for School Girls in Kenya

Executive Summary

The sanitary towel project aims at filling the gaps on the issues related to the rights of children in Kenya. Though many organizations and networks have in recent years emerged to champion the rights of children in Kenya, little effort has been done to come up with a well-coordinated consulted force to strongly voice out issues related to the plights of children rights. The project will focus on implementing inclusive programming that addresses the cross-cutting issues that have seen children with special needs and from the marginalized areas have access to welfare services like provision of sanitary pads just like the other children regardless of their social-economic and cultural affiliations.

We fully understand the pain and suffering that poor communities are undergoing due to increasing total and economic dilemmas especially the people living in the slum’s areas and marginalized regions. The number of girls who luck sanitary towels affects our community development agenda. Social services are yet to be addressed despite those foreseen dangers.

Organizational Background and Capability

Youth Organization for International Volunteers (YOIV) came into existence primarily to mainstream child right activities in the development sector through advocacy, information sharing and strengthening of children programming in Kenya.

YOIV seeks to mainstream child right activities in the development sectors through advocacy, information sharing of child rights programming in Kenya. YOIV strongly advocates recognition of child rights as citizens with equal rights and who should enjoy all human rights and be involved in democratic processes.

YOIV has growing to be an example of a cohesive and dynamic set of organizations working together to improve the situation of children in Kenya.

Vision of the project:

To improve access to education and health for vulnerable children.

This is a provision of a stable and supporting environment for the vulnerable through the provision of facilities, education and activities, which develop their skills, capacities and capabilities to enable them to participate in society as mature and responsible individuals

Mission:

To deliver, and facilitate the delivery of, quality social services to the community in a focused, efficient and effective manner through a participatory and collaborative approach.

Core Values are:

Survival of the society is dependent on the holistic development of the Child

Children should not be alienated from their social-cultural environment.
The Childs’ Rights are Human Rights.

Programme strategy:

The strategy for delivering to YOIV members and achieve set goals include: -

Capacity building in such areas as Gender, Life skills including Reproductive Health rights of the child and other capacity gaps.
Lobbying and advocacy on policy for improved policy and legal frameworks.
Research to identify critical gaps in girl child interventions.
Establishment of a Resource Center to enhance information sharing.

Experiences:

YOIV has been involved in a number of successful works in lobbying and advocacy for the rights of children and building the capacity of its members to become leading players in child right programming. Some of the past accomplishments include the following:

Undertaking research on child right issues.
Capacity building among YOIV members and other stakeholders. Various training needs have been identified and addressed. YOIV has held workshops and seminars on the following areas
- Guidance and Counseling: Psychosocial Life skills
- Child Rights
- Gender mainstreaming.
- Fight against FGM.
- Research and development.
- Psychosocial support for orphans and vulnerable children (OVCs)

Introduction

Menstruation, the monthly shedding of the uterine lining, is a normal, natural process that occurs in all healthy adult women who haven't reached menopause. Girls can begin to menstruate at any time between eight and eighteen years. To deal with the management of the flow, women over the ages have used unhygienic materials like grass, sponges, cotton pads, mattresses, tissue paper and other absorbents to control the blood. In addition, over decades, women have been taught that having periods is shameful. The embarrassment surrounding menstruation is a somewhat universal phenomenon, found in most cultures of the world and with many associated code words, euphemisms and phrases used as linguistic substitutes: examples of reference made to menstrual flow – curse, womanly chromosomes, monsoon winds, red devil etc. Women and girls have indirectly, if not directly, absorbed the message that menstrual blood is dirty, smelly, unhygienic and unclean. With all these negative messages it is natural for women to want to hide their menstruation. To do otherwise is to go against what they have been taught as women. But menstruation is a natural physical process – a harmless by-product of a biological event.

The focus of this proposal is the effect of menstruation of girl child education in Kenya. It has been noted with concern that girl child drops out has been on the rise. When the NARC Government in 2002 announced the provision of Free Primary Education, enrolment in primary schools was at a record high. This has been lauded as a major achievement of this administration. However, girls are not enjoying the free education as much as they should as they face different challenges that are not met by the mere provision of uniform, books, teachers and the classrooms. Their biological makeup requires extra attention to allow girls to cope with full days’ learning in a month; a full term and the whole year without critical and destructive absenteeism.

The overall goal of this proposal is to ensure the participation of adolescent girls in education. We intend to meet this vision through three specific objectives, namely:-

To distribute sanitary towels to at least10,000 girls
To lobby the donor community for inclusion of sanitary wear in their programmes
Capacity building /institutional development

Justification of Campaign

A girl absent from school due to menses for 4 days in 28 days (a month) loses 13 learning days equivalent to 2 weeks of learning in every school term. In a year (9 months) she losses 39 learning days equivalent to 6 weeks of learning time. A girl in primary school between class 6 and 8 loses 18 learning weeks out of 108 weeks. Within the 4 years of high school, the same girl loses 156 learning days equivalent to almost 24 weeks out of 144 weeks of learning in High school.

This is a clear indication that a girl child is a school drop out while still in school. Given this trend, it’s very unlikely that such a girl will participate and achieve equality with the boy child or a girl whose sanitary provision is met. This is a sure threat to the realization of gender parity and equality in education. It follows, therefore, Kenya as a country is unlikely to achieve Education for All (EFA) Goals and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The provision of a conducive learning environment for all children is key if education for all is to be achieved. Specifically, to achieve gender parity and equality by 2015, there is a need for a concerted effort by families, communities, the Government and International Development Partners to pool resources towards this goal.

Project Activities

The following are the specific objectives of the project.

Objective one: To access 10,000 girls to sanitary towels

The activities to fulfil this objective are:-

Convene eight (8) planning meetings for the sanitary campaign
Convene three (3) sensitization and lobbying forums each for the private sector.
Develop and distribute IEC materials for the campaign
Distribute sanitary wear to girl schools
Train children as Trainers Of Trainers
Hold training workshops for Community-Based Organizations in Rift Valley.

Objective Two: Lobby the Development Partners to include sanitary wear in their programmes

Activities are:-

Hold a sensitization workshop for development partners

Objective Three: Capacity Building

Activities

Develop a participatory monitoring and evaluation framework for the entire campaign with measurable short, medium and long term milestones
Enhance community participation and sustainability of the campaign
Leverage adequate resources to serve all aspects of the campaign and all areas of the country

The activities will be undertaken in four main programmes:-

Advocacy
Awareness
Distribution
Fundraising

Risk Analysis/Critical Assumptions

During the implementation of the project, the following have been identified as the main risks that might affect the project activities leading to delays in meeting the project overall goal.

High expectations from the communities: the expectations from the community might be too high leading to burning out or exhausted resources. However, at the inception of the project, the community will be made to understand that they should not expect monetary gain but direct support.

Lack of political will from the government: in a country that has been polarized politically, lack of political will or commitment more especially on enacting laws and policies that are child-friendly is expected. However, to counteract against this, the relevant policy-making organs of government will be targeted during the public debates to raise awareness on the existing gaps on children rights especially the girl.

Insufficient resources: resources to match the community needs might not be enough. Through networking and linkages, Youth Organization for International Volunteers will ensure that proper utilization of locally available resources is done.

Cultural conflicts: due to the patriarchal nature of the majority of Kenyan, gender-related issues in the country that has many tribes are common. However, the project has outline strong capacity building and awareness strategies to counter this.

Youth Organization for International Volunteers has a code of good conduct and Child Protection Policy where all staff joining the organizations must sign and adhere to all the time. Likewise, to safeguard the children from abuse and also safeguarding its image together with that of partners, YOIV will ensure that all civil society organizations working together have a Child Protection Policies in place and also ensure that those staff seconded by their organizations signs both the Child Protection Policies and Code of Good Conduct.

Monitoring & Evaluation

The general monitoring will be undertaken by the various volunteers who have been recruited and are currently undergoing training on effective management of the different aspects of the project, including monitoring. The project volunteers will visit the different areas once per quarter to assess the progress of the communities as per the reports submitted. On the ground, the monitoring and data collection will be undertaken by the community organisations that have had their capacities strengthened and built. These structures will feed into the campaign secretariat for purposes of analysis and monitoring.

At the end of the year, there will be an external consultant who will undertake an independent evaluation of the project's impact in the period of time. The specific variables for the evaluation will include, the policies in place relating to sanitation, the resources allocated, any government indication towards supporting the process.

To ensure that the project is on course and moving in the right direction, there will be frequent field visits by the officers concerned to monitor the project activities.

Youth Organization for International Volunteers will develop a monitoring tool that will be done in consultation with girls. Field visits for monitoring will be done at least twice in a month while evaluation of the project activities will be carried out on a quarterly basis. During these monitoring and evaluation of the project activities, there might be alterations that might affect the project approaches.

Project Sustainability

YOIV has put in place mechanisms for programme sustainability. These include;

Capacity strengthening for the members. The organization has heavily invested in strengthening the capacity of its members in various aspects particularly the project management and other specialized areas. This will ensure that even when the funding period ends the partners will be able to manage and continue with the programmes initiated.

Increased networking: the organization embraces networking as one of its founding basis and principles. At different levels it has been closely networking with the service providing agencies. This has ensured that a strong referral system that will be used by the community even after the funding period is over.

Collaboration with the private sector has been sought. This will ensure that resources can be tapped from this source and continue encouraging their contribution as part of their social responsibility.