Confronting Period Poverty in Sri Lanka

Story

Period Poverty affects the child’s performance at school. 4 in 5 teens with periods have missed classes or school as they could not access period products. 1/3 girls from low-income families miss class or school due to the same reason. From the age of 12 years until they leave school, an innumerable amount of school girls in Sri Lanka miss school profusely due to unreachable sanitary products, physical discomfort, and cultural stigma. The lack of sanitary products are barring many from their right to an education. There are girls who drop out of school at drastically different rates than the boys as soon as their hit puberty because they don’t have supplies- Due to the inaccessibility of sanitary napkins, women resort to newspapers, old rugs, and socks and some school girls would sit on a cardboard mat for hours. Or even worse, when they have a limited stock of sanitary napkins, they would wear a pad for hours to save. These informal methods have detrimental effects on women in the long term. The women and girls who cannot access feminine supplies are particularly susceptible to infections and the risks of friction, heat, moisture, Synthetic leakages, contact dermatitis, bacterial vaginitis, and Urinary Tract infections. Not only can poor menstrual hygiene result in reproductive tract infections, but a study conducted in India showed a link between cervical cancer—the second most common type of cancer among Sri Lankan women—and clothes used to replace menstrual pads. Our vision is to make sanitary products accessible to school girls. We believe that by providing sanitary products, the rate of absenteeism would reduce and we hope to see a reduction in such rates.