The One Million Sustainable Pads Campaign
Let’s Talk Period! is a platform founded in 2020 to promote and advocate for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR), with a special focus on menstrual health and hygiene. It provides a safe environment for menstruators to discuss topics related to their menstrual and reproductive health and rights in a supportive environment. Our goal is to normalize conversations about periods in public, destigmatize menstruation, and dispel myths and misconceptions.
Over the years, Let’s Talk Period! has been and continues to be an active part of the community. To raise awareness, we have conducted several health education sessions in schools and facilitated various workshops locally and internationally. In 2022, we established a Telegram BOT that provided educational content written in a simple Sudanese dialect targeting young women and adolescent girls to raise awareness about menstrual health. We also initiated a WhatsApp broadcast that offered subscribers information about different SRHR topics and events. Let’s Talk Period! was the first to introduce sustainable menstrual products in Sudan, starting with menstrual cups and later including menstrual discs, reusable pads, period panties, kegel trainers, and vaginal dilators to treat vaginismus. The initiative also organized a series of webinars with SRHR experts on various topics.
The One Million Sustainable Pads Campaign is led by Let’s Talk Period!. In this campaign, we raise funds to distribute reusable cloth pads made locally by our partner, Al Salam Factory. Al Salam Factory is the first and only Sudanese factory that produces reusable period products and diapers. Along with the pads, menstrual health education is provided, covering how to use and care for reusable pads, as well as raising awareness about gender-based violence (GBV) and providing referrals.
GAAKT e. V. is our partner based in Germany, and it has been and continues to provide us with technical support and consultations.
So far, we have successfully completed our first distribution campaign, delivering nearly 9,000 pads to 3,000 girls and women along with menstrual health education in Kassala State, Sudan. The next step involves distributing pads in the Adre refugee camp in Eastern Chad, where hundreds of thousands of Sudanese refugees reside. Considering multiple suggestions from the community, the initiative will start providing comprehensive menstrual health education to women and girls due to the significant knowledge gap. We will begin by targeting young girls and women in South Kordofan State in Sudan and in the Kiryandongo refugee camp in Uganda, where tens of thousands of Sudanese refugees reside.
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