Tackling Period Poverty Through Reusable Pads and Incremental Payment Models
Executive Summary
Root Cause
Over the course of 5 years, reusable pads can save women almost 2,000 shillings which is about 3x their annual income. However, the upfront cost for reusable pads isn’t affordable. So while they save thousands of dollars over time, they don’t have a steady income to afford the cost.
Solution
Purchasing the Essential Flo
Kit from Palesa Pads which
includes 4 reusable pads +
cleaning kit. Distributing them through an on site partner. Using
M-Pesa to do automatic incremental monthly payments.
Problem
Girls in Kenya are using old cloth, rags, hay, sand, or ash when they can’t afford the pads they need. This is extremely uncomfortable, causes infections, prevents girls from working to support their families,
getting a proper education, and more.
THE PROBLEM
In Kenya, approximately 50% of girls aged 13 - 18 do not have access to sanitary products.
Problem Overview
Globally, a minimum of 500 million women experiences period poverty every month. This means they don’t have access to the proper products and sanitation methods needed during menstruation. Specifically in Africa, 1 out of every 10 girls miss school during her menstrual cycle due to period poverty and cultural stigmas surrounding menstruation. On top of this, women do not have proper places to dispose of their disposable pads due to cultural beliefs. Women often throw menstrual products in deserted open areas or in latrines which is polluting their land and water. We need a way to distribute a cheaper, cleaner and more sustainable product for women in Africa and all over the world.
Period Poverty Impact
School girls start facing this problem around the age of 13 and it heavily impacts them for the rest of their lives. Trem, a 14-year old girl from Africa, talked about how she has to go home to change her pad due to poor facilities in her school. Her house is fairly close by, but said that other girls have to travel further and don’t bother coming back to school. Around 23% of girls will drop out of school completely when they hit puberty. When girls drop out of school at an early age, they are less likely to go back to school in the future. Not only does this result in a poverty cycle, but girls who graduate secondary school are 6x less likely to marry young. In Africa, child marriage would decrease by over 60% if all girls had secondary education. So when girls like Trem and her friends end up dropping out of school due to poor sanitation facilities at school and a lack of access to proper sanitary pads, they become 6x more prone to child marriage and this keeps the poverty cycle gong. Their chances of being able to find work, support their families, and live a happy life in the future become miniscule. This is a horrible cycle that keeps repeating itself. We need more people working to help girls like Trem and her friends to ensure they have a chance at a positive future.
A pack of 10 sanitary pads costs 18 Shillings or $1.55 CAD.
With 17.6 million Kenyans living below two dollars a day,
buying pads are the least of their worries. Instead, they’re using alternatives such as sand, ash, and old rags.
High Sanitary Pad Cost
Girls don’t have access to the proper sanitation methods needed to stay clean / healthy at their schools or at home. On top of using unsanitary products like sand and ash, not understanding the proper sanitation methods raises a huge health concern. This leads to over 50% of girls in Kenya developing UTIs and other painful infections.
Horrible Health + Sanitation Practices
Conventional disposable menstrual products made from 90% plastic generate 200,000 tonnes of waste per year. All of this waste is polluting their land and water systems, especially because they don’t have proper methods to dispose of their products.
Large Plastic Waste Amounts
Symptoms of Period Poverty
While lowering the cost is one of the core metrics for a solution, improving health / sanitation, reducing plastic waste, and educating the population are also incredibly important in solving this problem.
The current culture in Africa is painting women who menstruate as unclean, or impure. School girls will get bullied at school which leads them to missing anywhere from 10-20% of school days. The vast majority end up dropping out of school completely. We need to properly educate the entire population on menstruation and inform them about the proper sanitation methods.
Low Education Levels
THE SOLUTION
Distributing reusable pads through incremental payment models.
Solution Overview
Reusable pads are approximately 21x cheaper than disposable pads but the upfront cost isn’t affordable. By implementing an affordable incremental payment model we can ensure they get access to the proper products they need at a price that fits their needs.
Reduced Sanitary Pad Cost
Reusable pads are more sanitary and fairly easy to clean with the right products. Our pads also have incredibly absorbent lining inside to prevent leaking which means girls will be able to stay in school throughout the day without needing to change their pad. These are more comfortable and can also reduce infections and skin rashes because they are more breathable than disposable pads that have plastic lining.
Improve Health + Sanitation
Reusable pads last anywhere from 2-4 years which reduces the waste of these pads significantly. Women and girls won’t have to find methods of disposing their pads every day but instead they'll be able to wash them and wear them again the next day. There is also less packaging waste since they’re only buying a box every 2-5 years.
Reduce Plastic Waste
Targeting The Symptoms
The Product - Palesa Essential Flow Kit
Palesa Pads has created an Essential Flow Kit product that includes 1 MINI pad, 1 MIDI pad, 1 MAXI pad, 1 MEGA pad, a 5L bucket to wash pads in, 1 250g Sunlight hand washing powder, 1 125g Sunlight laundry soap, 1 200ml bottle of white spirit vinegar, and an information leaflet.
We believe their product is exactly what these women will need as it includes the pads and the proper sanitation products needed. By combining their product with an incremental business model we can truly start to tackle this problem.
We will work directly with Palesa to order their products in bulk. The approximate price for 2,000 kits will be 3,808,838 Shillings ($8,236 CAD).
The packages will be stored in a local facility as they’re being distributed to the women in girls.
The Payment - Incremental Payments
Once the packages are ordered and shipping to the village in Kenya. They will be distributed by an on-site team. During the distribution the team will set up the incremental payment system through M-Pesa.
A study conducted by Pew Research in 2017 found that 80% of adults in Kenya reported owning a mobile phone, with 30% owning a smartphone and 50% owning a basic phone. Kenya leads the world in the adoption of mobile money services with 96% of households owning a mobile money account. M-Pesa holds a nearly universal market share of 98.9% of the Kenya mobile money market. Overall, M-PESA has captured roughly 70% of households in Kenya, and over 50% of lower income households.
We will use the M-Pesa automatic transactions for each customer.
Case Study: MyAgro
Problem: Smallholder farmers in Africa don’t have the consistent cash-flow to purchase seeds/fertilizer/equipment upfront.
Solution: Allowing farmers to pay for items in increments by purchasing scratch cards. The number on the scratch card, when SMS’ed, makes a deposit on their MyAgro account. This is particularly important for women, who grow the lion’s share of food on smallholdings but who are often excluded from decision-making. The mobile layaway payments provide them with all-important privacy and flexibility. People use this system to buy mobile credit in these areas, and the majority of them use mobile money, so not much behaviour change is needed.
Outcome: 90,000 customers reached in Mali, Senegal and Tanzania (2020).
NEXT STEPS + TESTING
The next steps needed to take to test the existing hypothesis
Core Assumptions + Testing Areas
Women and girls facing this problem aren’t fully aware of the effects. If they aren’t even willing to use these products for free then we need to implement a stronger education model so they understand the extent of this problem. Through the pilot, we will be able to understand their response to the products and how it fits into their everyday life.
Cultural and social stigmas around menstruation remain a huge aspect of this problem. Distribution without education won’t be an effective solution. By distributing these pads and understanding the community reaction we can figure out what barriers distribution alone will be able to tackle and what other education models need to be implemented to solve this problem.
Cultural Barriers
Willingness
Next Steps - Testing These Assumptions
In order to start testing these assumptions we first need to finalize a team of on-site distributors willing to help us tackle the problem. Specifically, we need a team who cares about the community, understands the problem, is fluent with M-Pesa and is willing to commit to this for at least 6 months. The ideal team would be an on ground charity in Kenya that has distributed products to the population priar.
Confirming On-Site Distributor
Once we’ve confirmed an on-site distributor we need to purchase the Essential Flo Kit from Palesa Pads. For 2,000 kits we will need $8,500 CAD. For storage and any other unknown costs (ie. shipping products, other venue spaces in Kenya etc) we’ll need $1,500 CAD. The total money needed to test these assumptions is $10K CAD. Ideally we could get this money from the charity used to distribute but the alternative would be to raise grant money.
For the full breakdown of the money needed click here.
Raising $10K
To test assumptions and understand more about how we can sustainability implement this solution we will do an initial pilot. Through the pilot, we will distribute the Flow Kits to women and girls for free and gather information about their willingness to use the products, how distribution helps overcome cultural barriers, the overall response of the women/girls as well as the overall community response. In order to to do this pilot, there are two things we need.
ABOUT ME
Nyla Pirani
About Me
I've spent the last three years at a human accelerator program for high-potential students who want to change the world. I have a huge amount of curiosity for emerging science/tech and am on a mission to improve the global quality of life. Over the last few years, I've explored human longevity, AI, the future of food and more. I'm incredibly curious and am continually working towards improving the global quality of life for girls around the world.
If you want to help me tackle this huge problem of period poverty through funding, introductions, mentorship or any other way you may be able to support me, please send me an email (nyla.kiran@gmail.com) and I would love to set up a time to chat.
I believe that we need more smart people working on hard problems and this is one of those problems where there simply isn’t enough smart people working to solve it. I’m going to change that.
Tackling Period Poverty Through Reusable Pads and Incremental