Johannesburg - In celebration of Menstrual Hygiene Day, the Imbumba Foundation’s Caring4Girls programme, in partnership with Comfitex, hosted a menstrual hygiene dialogue and sanitary pad distribution activation at Sitintile Secondary School in Kanyamazane, Mpumalanga, on Friday, March 26.
"Further to our successful MHD collaboration in 2022, at Mqhawe High School, Iqadi, Inanda, KZN, we immediately knew we had to make this a part of our annual outreach", said Salomé Makgato, senior brand manager for Comfitex, Lion Match Company.
The event empowered over 800 girls. The programme included professional menstrual hygiene practitioners and inspirational speakers who engaged the young women in conversation about their menstrual challenges. An interactive debate was also facilitated as part of the day’s activities, and beneficiaries each received a six-month supply of sanitary pads as well as an educational booklet.
The Imbumba Foundation Caring4Girls Programme was founded more than a decade ago by Richard Mabaso after overhearing a fearful conversation about the misconceptions and stigmas associated with menstrual cycles between his mother and niece.
This inspired the inception of a programme that today supports over 1.8 million indigent girls across South Africa with sanitary towels, puberty education, and menstrual hygiene to keep them in school. The theme of MHD 2023 is making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030. The overarching goal is to build a world where no one is held back because they menstruate by 2030. MHD falls on May 28 annually and was initiated by the German non-profit WASH United in 2013.
"The reasons I started Caring 4 Girls align completely with the goals set for MHD for 2023: to create a world where no one is held back because they menstruate," said Imbumba Founder and CEO, Mabaso.
"A world where menstruation can be managed safely, hygienically, with confidence, and without shame, where accessibility and affordability is no longer an obstacle, and period stigma is a thing of the past".
Comfitex further supports the Caring4Girls programme by being one of the headline brand match campaign partners of the annual Dis-Chem Million Comforts Campaign, which collects over 10 million sanitary pads for the initiative annually since 2016.
The Star