We're excited to announce a new grant supporting deaf schoolgirls and blind schoolgirls with their menstrual health.
School girls in Malawi face many challenges in completing their education including forced child marriage, having to work to support their families, and a lack of period products causing them to miss classes every month. The drop-out rate among the 900 female pupils at Karonga Primary School of Deaf and Blind is estimated to be a shocking 87%.
Think Malawi is providing £3,000 to Hope for Relief, a youth-led non-profit based in Malawi, to provide underwear and soap, sewing machines, materials, and the necessary training to make reusable sanitary pads. This will help to ensure that the girls at Karonga Primary School of Blind and Deaf are able to complete their education, and build better lives for themselves and their families.
Thokozire Mtonga, Hope for Relief Community Development Officer said: “The Think Malawi grant will help learners from the Karonga School of Deaf and Blind to have access to reusable sanitary pads, knowledge of menstrual hygiene management and sexual reproductive health rights, reducing class absenteeism and teenage pregnancies among vulnerable deaf and blind girls.”
Deaf and blind young girls and boys from Rumphi, Karonga and Chitipa districts are sent to Karonga where there is public school for deaf and blind students in the northern Malawi. Due to poverty, most parents don’t send their disabled children to schools, and of those who do, few are able to provide hygiene and menstrual health products or even underwear for their children.
Founder and Trustee of Think Malawi, Steve McInerny, said: “I’m very thankful to our donors whose contributions have enabled this vital project to proceed. Following research on the ground in Malawi, we have developed two key aims: improving results for all school children, and removing the barriers to girls’ education as they are often severely disadvantaged by poverty and cultural expectations.
“This is one of two projects that will support over 6,000 young people in Malawi as they seek to improve their standard of living and realise their ambitions. If you would like to join us in supporting these and other grassroots projects in Malawi, please join our Think Malawi Together supporters programme.”