Elewesha [Swahili for ‘create understanding’]

A significant majority of girls and women in rural and informal Kenyan settlements face barriers in managing their menstrual and reproductive health. Deep-rooted socio-cultural and gender norms, combined with silence, shame, and stigma surrounding the female body, create information gaps, affecting decision-making, product access, usage, and menstrual hygiene service quality.

The challenges related to menstrual hygiene information and product access manifest as follows:

1. **Menstrual Stigma**: Rooted in gender inequalities, menstruation remains a taboo topic, hindering the sharing of accurate information on product choice, proper usage, and hygiene. Women and girls remain unsure of where to seek support.

2. **Unwanted Pregnancies**: Lack of age-appropriate knowledge about menstruation leads to early and unwanted pregnancies. The stress and shame associated with menstruation can harm women's mental health, and unhygienic products can cause reproductive tract infections.

3. **Education and Economic Impact**: Girls may miss school or work due to a lack of menstrual products and support, impacting education and economic opportunities. Achieving gender equality becomes challenging when menstruation-related taboos hinder women's participation.

4. **Discrimination Against Persons with Disabilities (PWDs)**: Pervasive stigma surrounds the sexual and menstrual health of PWDs, amplifying challenges due to visual, mobility, and self-care impairments. Misconceptions and ignorance further worsen their predicaments.

5. **Misconceptions about PWDs' SRHR**: Misunderstandings about the sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) of PWDs lead to discrimination and perpetuate their exclusion. These misconceptions, such as assuming all PWDs share the same reproductive systems, impact their well-being.

6. **Sub-optimal Access to Menstrual Products**: Innovations in menstrual hygiene products have been hindered by a lack of user input, affecting suitability, usability, and disability friendliness.

7. **Challenges in Managing Menstrual Discomfort**: Menstrual discomfort management is often hampered by information gaps. Women resort to unhygienic or harmful practices due to a lack of knowledge.

8. **Information Barriers in Pregnancy Avoidance**: Women who seek to avoid or space pregnancies face difficulties due to information gaps related to menstruation. This affects their access to reliable support and may lead to discontinuation of certain menstrual implements.

These challenges underscore the urgent need to address menstrual health and hygiene issues among these populations in Kenya. The Elewesha Campaign, initiated by the Noni Kariuki Foundation, aims to eliminate these barriers, foster open conversations, and provide information and support to empower women and girls, including those with disabilities, in making informed decisions about their menstrual and reproductive health.

What is your solution?

Elewesha seeks to amplify, enliven and normalize age-appropriate conversations about menstrual health & hygiene, towards eliminating barriers to information and access. Specifically, Elewesha will:

• Amalgamate menstrual health  & hygiene information from all available sources and forms and collate it into easily actionable, consumable and shareable formats for the benefit of all women and girls, including Differently Abled-person;
• Leverage on the creativity and huge social media followership of popular local artistes and young women influencers who are hugely followed by adolescents and youth to  to pass information on menstrual health hygiene as well as how and where to access menstrual information for various purposes including; de-stigmatization of menstruation, and increased uptake. This can be in visual or audio-visual formats. This will have an additional positive outcome of advocating  for facilitative laws & policies, embedding supportive socio-cultural norms, and reduction of access and affordability barriers.
• Expand and normalize conversations about various menstrual products to afford innovators and program designers information on the nuances of menstrual hygiene issues, products and their ease of use to improve or design better products and programs. 

Elewesha targets four categories of people, namely:

• 7,340 adolescents in schools in Meru, Tharaka-Nithi, Nyandarua, Embu and Laikipia Counties of Kenya
• 10,780 sexually active women and men Nyandarua, Embu and Laikipia Counties of Kenya and their environs and 3 million others across social media platforms
• 3,200 persons with disabilities in Meru, Tharaka-Nithi, Nyandarua, Embu and Laikipia Counties of Kenya
• Seven (7) Innovators (App developers and product manufacturers)

The solution will impact them as follows:

Adolescents: Teenagers often face difficulties in accessing menstrual hygiene products and services. Elewesha will help to focus attention on individual difficulties, interpersonal, community, or cultural influences regarding menstrual hygiene. Adolescent girls also face many barriers, including fear, embarrassment, lack of knowledge, and cost of products, which the solution seeks to solve. Furthermore, Elewesha will also underscore the quality of and barriers to access of menstrual health services and how to overcome them.

Unwanted pregnancies for sexually active women: Women and girls’ access to menstrual hygiene products is central to achieving several of the Sustainable Development Goals SDGs. The lack of basic and age-appropriate knowledge about menstruation may contribute to early and unwanted pregnancy; the stress and shame associated with menstruation can negatively affect mental health; and unhygienic sanitation products may make girls and women susceptible to reproductive tract infections – all affecting SDG health outcomes (Goal 3). 

Girls may be absent or less attentive in school/class during menstruation due to a lack of products or support from the school, affecting education (SDG Goal 4), or at work, affecting economic opportunities (SDG Goal 8). Gender equality (SDG Goal 5) cannot be achieved when taboos and myths prevent menstruating women and girls from full participation in society. This is why Elewesha intends to engage men in these conversations. 

Differently Abled Persons: Menstrual hygiene access for differently abled persons is a recognised public health, social and educational issue, which must be achieved to allow the realisation of their human rights. People with disabilities are likely to experience layers of discrimination when they are menstruating or in productive ages but lack support or suitable information and products to help them overcome challenges associated with their visual, physical, mobility, mental and self-care impairments. Elewesha plugs in to the urgency to close gaps in access to information, support and products suitable for this population.  

Innovators: Failure to develop affordable but quality products, for menstrual hygiene markets impacts on sustainable consumption and production patterns (SDG Goal 12). Informed innovators and entrepreneurs can play a big role in remote and affordable access to menstrual products, materials and services to women, girls, and differently abled persons. There is no known menstrual product for the latter category.  

Our team consists of persons with a combined wealth of experience in menstrual health management. They understand nuances in programming, menstrual information packaging & dissemination, and products suitability for various ages and purposes. 

Our team members are variously linked to organizations, schools and communities, which can be leveraged to meet the set objectives. 

Our team enjoys a network of schools through which adolescent girls can be communally reached, educated, and supported to access everything they need as far as menstrual health management is concerned.

We enjoy goodwill and support of the media, artistes, influencers and creatives with a combined followership of 5 million people, on whose platforms and creativity we shall leverage to reach to various audiences, to inform, engage and amplify conversations on menstrual health management, products, usage and access.

We are not currently operating this specific project, however, this year our interventions  have reached more than 4500 vulnerable adolescents, young women and Differently Abled- Persons. 

We hope to directly impact at least 30,000 of the menstruating population and at least 3 million through social media platforms through our projects over the course of two years.

Impact Goals:

1. Adolescents:

   • Goal: Help teens access menstrual products and services better.

2. Unwanted Pregnancies for Sexually Active Women:

   • Goal: Support menstrual hygiene to prevent early pregnancies and improve girls' well-being and education.

3. Differently Abled Persons:

   • Goal: Ensure everyone, including those with disabilities, can access menstrual hygiene easily.

4. Innovators:

   • Goal: Encourage creating better and more affordable menstrual products for all.

Full - Time - 3

Part - Time - 5

2 YEARS

From a social enterprise point of view, NKF will: invest in a social enterprise to produce, promote, and distribute menstrual hygiene products, with priority given to affected persons and their caregivers for production and promotion. The same population will be involved in influencing the product's uptake and innovation.

Furthermore, renowned artists and influencers will be involved in supporting the primary influencers, mentoring them, and supporting them

A Hybrid Enterprise Model that will initially rely on grants and donations to establish stability. This will hopefully lead to a more commercially sustainable phase where we can establish a social enterprise, that will not rely solely on grants and donations.