The pad project
What is the Pad Project?
The Pad Project is an initiative run by the Girls Club and the ISSH Nepal SEEDS Team.
Since 2017, our girls have directly brought over 400 reusable sanitary cloth pads to teenage girls at the Shree Kalika Secondary School in Nepal, and to Serang Monastery, a nunnery in the northern Gorkha region.
Menstruation must not be an obstacle for women to obtain a higher education, let alone their basic human rights.
Why do we deliver cloth pads?
The decline of secondary education participation is a major issue in Nepal, especially among teenage girls.
One obstacle that stops these girls from receiving a secondary education is the unavailability of sanitary products.
Without sufficient care during their periods, girls use ragged cloth and leaves as substitutes for sanitary pads.
In worse scenarios, Nepali women go through 'chhaupadi', a centuries-old tradition of banishing women from their own homes during their menstruation.
Menstruation must not be an obstacle for women to obtain a higher education, let alone their basic human rights. By delivering reusable sanitary pads, we aim to send as many girls to school and follow their dreams.
After a successful pilot program of delivering the reusable cloth pads to a group of girls from Shree Kalika Secondary School in 2017, we expanded our program to involve every high school girl, as well as the female staff from the Secondary School.