Why did you create this innovation?

Many girls drop out of school altogether once they begin menstruating. Should our young girls miss 20% of school days in a given year due to a lack of information or a lack of sanitary products? The plain answer is NO!
There’s already a lot standing in their way; from pervasive poverty to persistent cultural attitudes, to forced early marriages and child labor.

Periods shouldn't be one of them!

How does your innovation work in practice?

Talking about Periods should never be boring. To effectively teach periods to young school girls, we have to use a medium they find much more appealing; Comic books!

PadHer is making it free, fun, easy, and comfortable to teach young African schoolgirls from underserved communities about periods and puberty using comic books.

Our comic book series "Girls Only" tells the story of a 12-year old African schoolgirl Amanda, who just got her first period. The monthly comic series takes us on young Amanda’s journey to better understanding periods and puberty.

Every copy of our free comic book comes with free sanitary pads to help fight against period poverty. PadHer is constantly visiting schools around Africa, distributing our free comic books to young schoolgirls, and engaging them in a one-hour workshop covering key topics related to periods. All for FREE!

At the end of every period workshop, every schoolgirl who participated is given a certification of participation to celebrate her.

How has it been spreading?

Padher has reached 2 schools in 2 underserved communities in Africa, distributed over 500+ free comic books and 1,500+ free reusable sanitary pads. We have impacted 530 young schoolgirls!

Our Hybrid Model

PadHer operates as a non-profit organization and as a social enterprise.
As a non-profit, PadHer provides innovative ways to educate young African schoolgirls in underserved communities on periods and puberty while making sanitary pads free and accessible.

On the other hand, as a social enterprise, PadHer manufactures and sells high-quality, low-cost reusable sanitary pads and uses the profit made from selling them to help fight period poverty in Africa. For every pad PadHer sells, it donates a free reusable sanitary pad to a young African schoolgirl who can not afford one.

If I want to try it, what should I do?

PadHer visits schools in underserved communities within Africa and impacts the young schoolgirls in that school. In addition to visiting schools, PadHer is constantly partnering with local NGOs across Africa to bring PadHer to their community. This program is called “Empower Dada”.
Anyone can download our comic books for free via our official website; https://padher.org/download