Partners
Partners
We at The Pad Project are grateful for our partners on the ground who help monitor and ensure the success of each program. Thanks to your contributions, The Pad Project has placed six pad machines in different regions in India and implemented a reusable cloth pad-making program in Sierra Leone. We are working to install a semi-automated pad machine in Afghanistan and to launch a reusable cloth pad-making program in Guatemala. The Pad Project is combating period poverty in the U.S. by hosting menstrual hygiene donation drives in the greater Los Angeles area and providing grassroots organizations with microgrants to purchase bulk menstrual supplies. With your help, we hope to place machines in India, Kenya, Nepal, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Uganda in 2020!
If you’re interested in partnering with The Pad Project please contact info@thepadproject.org.
OUR NGO PARTNERS
In 2017, The Pad Project began working with Action India, a grassroots, community-based organization founded in 1976 in the midst of the Autonomous Women’s Movement in India, to identify a community of women who wanted a pad machine in their village. As seen in the film Period. End of Sentence.,The Pad Project helped Action India purchase and install a manual pad machine in the village of Kathikhera. Today, Action India holds more than 100 total workshops per month, covering three different locations, and reaches over 5,000 women directly or indirectly by their Menstrual Health Management (MHM) initiatives.
AMOR is a non-profit organization that operates Afshar Hospital and ten community clinics in Kabul, Afghanistan. Afshar Hospital works to improve the overall health of women in the local community by promoting best practices with regards to sexual and reproductive health, sanitation and hygiene, and special prenatal care. Due to a demand for 15,000 to 20,000 pads per month, the hospital requested to partner with The Pad Project to install a semi-automated pad machine within the hospital premises. Afshar Hospital will provide space, electricity, and storage for the pad machine in a secure environment, and they will employ 3 to 4 women to operate the machine.
With 45 years of experience, the CSUN Women’s Research and Resource Center (WRRC) is the oldest women’s center in the Cal State system. Their goal is to enhance campus and community understanding of gender issues and concerns and to ensure that students at CSUN have their basic needs met. In Fall 2016, the WRRC launched their campus’s first Food and Toiletry Pantry, and within the first 3 months, they had 103 visits. The pantry is now averaging 120-160 visits per month, and the demand is only growing. Last fall, the WRRC launched a Menstrual Care Initiative, but currently they are only able to offer students 5 pads or tampons per visit per week. To help meet the needs of students, The Pad Project has provided a grant to the WRRC to purchase pads, liners, tampons, and menstrual cups, which will be distributed to students on campus free of charge. This partnership between The Pad Project and the WRRC will work to promote menstrual equity among CSUN students and to break the stigma surrounding menstruation.
As of November 2019, The Pad Project has partnered with The Desai Foundation to help expand their Asani Sanitary Napkin Program to the Nanded District of Maharashtra. Our funding will support a portion of the funds required to purchase the new semi-automated machine, which will produce retail quality sanitary napkins. The machine will produce 5,000 pads per day, improving the health and livelihood of thousands who live in the region.
Pencils of Promise (PoP) is a 501(c)3 for-purpose organization that believes every child should have access to quality education. They build schools, programs, and global communities around the common goal of education for all. PoP partners with local communities and governments to achieve quality education through building and repairing schools, supporting teachers with literacy training, and providing innovative resources and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programming.
The Pad Project has partnered with PoP to implement a reusable cloth pad-making program in the Zona Reina region of Guatemala. The project will teach PoP staff and local teachers how to make reusable pads with cloth and sewing kits. Teachers will then work with their students, both boys and girls, to create reusable pads. Students will be able to create their own pads, which will help them manage their periods.
The project will serve an estimate of 600 students in two schools and provide training to them, as well as 30 teachers, on how to use the reusable pads. Our collective goal is that this reusable cloth pad-making program will expand to different schools in the community and create sustainable social change by increasing access to menstrual hygiene products.
Photography by Nick Onken
Sierra Leone Rising is an organization dedicated to fostering quality education, supporting girls’ empowerment, and ensuring public health in Sierra Leone. In 2017, Sierra Leone Rising conducted a survey which revealed that 24% of girls were absent from schools within Bumpe Ngao Chiefdom because of inconveniences during their menstrual periods. The Pad Project has partnered with Sierra Leone Rising to provide reusable sanitary pads for 250 women, training for self-stitching skills, and educational workshops on menstrual management hosted by Sierra Leone Rising.
The EcoHub Small Industries is a social enterprise working in more than 50 villages in the north-eastern states of Assam and Nagaland, India to produce sanitary napkins. The Pad Project has partnered with EcoHub to help grow their program by providing them with a manual pad machine. EcoHub aims to reach 2,000 women through the 5 villages they serve in the state of Nagaland. Additionally, EcoHub will conduct health check-ups and set up health awareness camps to improve menstrual and reproductive health.
PROGRAMMATIC PARTNERS
As of April 2020, The Pad Project has partnered with Lulu Lab, a humanitarian game studio that uses educational games and quizzes to discuss taboo topics like menstrual hygiene and sexual health and rights. Lulu Lab has been acknowledged by UNESCO, recently won British Council’s global innovation challenge #IdeasChangeLives, and has more than 2 years of experience co-designing and developing digital solutions and educational games with and for vulnerable children, adolescents, religious leaders, rural communities, and NGOs. The Pad Project is partnering with Lulu Lab to create a pilot impact study of our partnership with Sierra Leone Rising. An impact study will help us assess and understand the level of impact that the reusable cloth pad-making program has made in the lives of the users - e.g. improvement in day-to-day lives, increase in school attendance, decrease in menstrual stigma.
ORGANIZATIONAL PARTNERS
We're stronger together
We’re ready to give this project everything we have, but we know we can’t do it alone.