The aim is to enable teenage girls in Africa to attend school full time.

This all began in 2013 when I visited Zambia as part of the National Police Aid Charity’s (NPAC) annual visit. There I met a lady who told me that the girls were missing up to one week of education each month because they had no sanitary protection. Cultural and other taboos reign supreme, this is a problem seriously affecting the development and equality of millions of girls through lack of education.

Having researched the best materials and purchased the same with donations from Inner Wheel and NPAC, I returned to Mfuwe the following year and set up the first Washable Pad Workshop with Project Luangwa. Kits were made containing 5 washable pads, 2 pairs of underwear, a bar of soap, a secret washing line, a plastic bag and washing instructions. These are given free of charge to school girls from age 10 and upwards.

The following years saw the setting up of workshops in several villages and schools in Zambia and Malawi and a few years ago we established NPAC Zambia based in Lusaka where we have a more professional workshop making pads (40,000 so far) for a much larger area. We have now submitted a tender to supply pads to UNICEF and supply the whole of Zambia.

Evaluations have been made with the aid of the school teachers. The results are very encouraging with an increase in attendance and attainment from most pupils, one rural school recording a 75 percent increase in attendance.

We continue to spread the word and last year, with the help of the Ist Lady of Zanzibar I began a workshop on the Island, this is proving most successful and has resulted in one of the students going to Tanzania to teach at a new workshop just being introduced there. The Gambia then followed and finally I am pleased to say that the Rotary Aqua Box are going to include in their Family Box a set of Washable Sanitary Pads, so our first workshop in the UK.

Although most of these projects are now self-funding, initially they were supported with fabric and machines donated by Inner Wheel and Rotary Clubs, my grateful thanks to everyone concerned, without your help this could not have been so successful.

Education is a powerful way to break the cycle of poverty, ill health, misery, and low status passed on from one generation of women to the next. When you educate a woman, you educate a whole nation.

Marion Tasker (Chairman NPAC)

District 22

marion@taskerpartnership.co.uk