CapdCup

The first menstrual cup you can empty without removing it from your body, designed for use in developing countries with limited access to clean water.

Period poverty affects 2.3 billion women around the world, and 17 million women in the US. Women living in period poverty are unable to afford disposable period products, so they resort to using rags and unsafe materials for their periods, which cannot be properly cleaned. 

Menstrual cups seem like a great sustainable solution - they're made with medical-grade, non-toxic silicone and one cup lasts 10 years. However, according to UNICEF, 43% of schools worldwide lack access to clean water. Because of this, even women who have access to menstrual cups cannot safely use traditional menstrual cups at school because those cups need to be fully remove from the body, emptied, washed with clean water, and reinserted multiple times throughout the day. Due to inadequate menstrual health infrastructure, 1 in 5 young women misses school while they're on their period.

CapdCup is the first menstrual cup you can empty without removing it. 

When a traditional menstrual cup is full, you need to completely remove it, dump the contents out, wash it with clean water, and reinsert it in a comfortable position. This process can take up to 15-20 minutes, and it is also unsafe when you don't have access to clean water to wash the cup. When CapdCup is full, you simply open the cap on the bottom of the cup, which allows its contents to empty. Then, close the cap, and you’re on with your day in a matter of seconds - no removal necessary.

Our solution serves all women in developing countries who have minimal access to clean water, with a specific focus on school-aged women. Specifically, we focus on helping women in Uganda because in Uganda, 86% of young women miss school on their periods due to period poverty. In 2017, the UN sponsored a pilot of menstrual cups in Uganda as a way to combat this statistic. But what they found is that women had to boil, prepare, bottle, and carry water to school just to wash their cups throughout the day. Their conclusion was that clean water access at school and work was the number one barrier to widespread menstrual cup adoption in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since our solution does not require clean water for use throughout the day, we are the first sustainable menstrual product that serves the needs of this population and other populations with low clean water access.

I’m a product development engineer and long-time menstrual cup advocate, and I’m super passionate about improving options for women everywhere.

For years, I used disposable pads and tampons, but they’re expensive, lead to an increased risk of yeast infections, and are bad for the environment. I switched to using menstrual cups a few years ago, and while traditional menstrual cups solved the aforementioned issues, I found myself having to tediously remove, empty, wash, and reinsert my cup 10-20 times a day. 

In November 2021, I traveled to a country where I had minimal access to clean water while I was on my period. Numerous times a day, I was forced to either reinsert a dirty, unwashed cup or use unclean water to wash my cup after emptying it. I realized that millions of women around the world living in these conditions have very few options for managing their periods. As a BIPOC female product development engineer, my personal philosophy is to design products that solve the most pressing unmet needs I notice, especially for underrepresented populations. Menstrual health has not really seen much innovation compared to almost every other industry. This is why I designed CapdCup to help end the period struggle for all.

We have partnered with Papa's Hands, a nonprofit based in Uganda focused on ending period poverty. The organization's leader, Mukooza Juma, told me that women in the community currently resort to using unsanitary banana leaves to manage their period, which causes infections, because they can't afford disposable menstrual products. So when I first pitched the idea for CapdCup to him, he was confident that our cup would be a great solution for the women in the community. The issue he rose was that menstrual stigma is a barrier to adoption of new menstrual products in Sub-Saharan Africa. We then began organizing educational events in their community to help combat misconceptions and menstrual taboos. A few weeks ago, we held an event to teach health team leaders from 15 villages about menstrual cups. We educated them on how to address any misconceptions about insertable products (and their effect on "virginity"), and we were able to get their buy-in!

Over the last year, we also interviewed hundreds of women globally throughout the development of CapdCup to understand their pain points and unmet needs with existing menstrual solutions. In September 2022, we piloted our working prototype to a representative test group of 30 women, and based on their feedback, we finalized our prototype and became officially patent pending.

We plan to distribute more than 10,000 CapdCups from our first production order this year.

Papa's Hands, a Ugandan nonprofit focused on ending period poverty.