Re-usable Menstruation Pads
Over the past five years, we have been working with Mina and other members of the Karma Flights Foundation team to fund the distribution of reusable pads to schoolgirls in the Nisikhola district. Mina has been working with community nurses and teachers to promote and deliver education around menstruation health. In a country where there are lots of taboos around this subject and the practice in some areas is to ban them from the home during the time they are menstruating, this can be a very sensitive subject.
Girls with no means in which to manage their periods, frequently miss out on education. Little or no education means in turn that they miss out on life choices and there is less likelihood that they will be able to break the cycle of poverty.
Kits of reusable pads have been purchased from ‘Days for Girls’ (DfG), an international charitable organisation which has a workshop in Kathmandu. To date, we have funded the distribution of 2,715 kits. Each kit bag contains sufficient washable pads to last an individual for approximately three years and costs around £10.
We have raised the money needed for these kits through local fund raising and from a grant from The Peter Stebbings Memorial Charity, for which we are very grateful. We have constantly been looking at ways to make this project sustainable. Now, thanks to a very generous donation from Neil White and family, we can finally take this project to the next stage.
In 2025, six women attended training by a local DfG trainer on how to make the kits of pads. The training along with sewing machines, fabrics etc have all been paid for by Neil White and family.
One seamstress, Sapana, is based at Arnakot and has set up her sewing station in the waiting area of the health post. This is attracting a lot of positive interest from the local women. Her close proximity to the health post and to the local school means that she is ideally placed to make this a real community led project.
The other seamstresses are based in Pokhara and are working as a team. They have recently donated 54 kits to schoolgirls in Pokhara as part of a six month pilot project.
Each kit contains two base layers, eight pads, one waterproof pouch, two pairs of pants, a flannel, a bar of soap, a chart for monitoring the menstrual cycle and a drawstring bag to hold everything.
If you are able to support a young girl in rural Nepal by donating £10 via Just Giving, that would be absolutely wonderful. Please leave a message on the Justgiving page to say if you wish your donation to be earmarked for the pads appeal.
