Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
SHE: Sustainable Health Enterprises
Solution Overview & Benefits
SHE is an organization that helps women jumpstart social businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable menstrual pads.
Coupled with health education and advocacy, SHE helps girls and women lead more productive lives.
The pads are made using SHE's patent-pending technology which turns agro-waste, specifically banana fibers, into an absorbent pad material.
To create this low-cost sustainable pad, several steps must be taken:
- A woman acquires a loan to buy a machine and some banana fibers to make the product.
- After the product is made, she sells it to her friends at a 30% profit margin to allow for income generation.
The go! Pad is the sanitary pad comprised of banana fibers and agro-waste.
History & Development
In 2008, Elizabeth and three MIT students headed to Rwanda with a blender in their backpacks. What they came away with was a sustainable plan to tackle an urgent, global problem: girls’ and women’s lack of access to affordable menstrual pads.
As a Harvard graduate student, Elizabeth learned of this phenomenon among factory workers in Mozambique while working at the World Bank. According to one factory owner, 20% of her employees were missing work regularly, up to 30 days a year, because of menstruation.The reason: pads cost more than a day’s wages.
In many low and middle-income countries, menstruation has serious social and economic costs for women.
A woman can miss up to 50 days of school or work per year due to menstruation. The lack of access to affordable sanitation pads, limited health and hygiene education, and the taboo associated with menstruation means that these women have very few resources they can turn to.
Over time, SHE hopes that women will be able to lead more productive lives and that they and their communities can continue to thrive.
Availability
- Publicly available: yes
- Countries where available: Rwanda
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Get in Touch!
Get in touch with us by filling out the form or emailing us at contact@techxlab.org.
