During a visit to Ghana, Inspire to Rise and its partners met with the UK Foreign Secretary.

Inspire to Rise, a non-profit organisation that focuses on mentorship, menstruation hygiene education, and advocacy, along with Futurestars Charity, an education-through-sports charity, and Trashy Bags Africa, a UK-Ghana non-governmental organisation that upcycles used water sachets into sustainable products and bags, launched the “Periods of Change” initiative, which aims to provide menstrual health and hygiene education to girls in schools across the country.

The Periods of Change project aims to raise awareness about menstruation by educating students about this biological process and donating sanitary items to girls in participating schools in order to reduce stigma and ensure that they do not miss school during their monthly cycles.

Girls have considerable obstacles in managing their periods in many impoverished countries, including a lack of access to menstruation products, clean water, and proper sanitation facilities.

This can have a variety of severe repercussions, such as social shame, lost school days, and even health issues.

According to Ghana’s 2021 Policy Brief on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM), nearly 7 million women and girls in Ghana menstruate.

According to available data, one in every five girls aged 15 to 19 feels excluded from school, social, and household activities during their period.

The UK Foreign Secretary, James Cleverly, visited the Trashy Bags Africa Factory in Accra as part of a working visit to Ghana, where he toured the facility and spoke with officials and personnel from the organisation about their work in Ghana.

Throughout the tour, he interacted with Inspire to Rise and Futurestars Charity on their collaborative project Periods of Change, which was created in collaboration with Trashy Bags.

The co-created project aims to address one of the most pressing issues confronting girls and young women from disadvantaged communities: a lack of access to menstrual hygiene education and sanitary kits.

The three organisations have joined forces to give menstrual hygiene education to students in public schools across the country, as well as menstruation kits to girls in vulnerable communities.

Wendy Laryea, Founder of Inspire to Rise, spoke with the Foreign Secretary about the inauguration of ‘Periods of Change’ and the first phase of the project, which has so far helped close to 100 schoolgirls.

Beneficiaries of the organization’s endeavour receive menstrual kits from Inspire to Rise in order to alleviate period poverty and period stigma.

The first phase of the Periods of Change project seeks to supply 600 schoolgirls with free menstruation pads, underwear, soap, and hand sanitizers in recycled ‘Oblayoo Bags’ created by Trashy Bags.

She also discussed with the Foreign Secretary and his entourage the work that Inspire to Rise is doing to drive advocacy for the abolition of the period tax, as well as measures to ensure that disadvantaged girls and young women living with disabilities are at the forefront of her organization’s work.

She gave examples of how inspire to Rise is promoting inclusiveness via its work, such as organising a menstrual health and hygiene advocacy event for students at the Demonstration School for the Deaf in Mampong-Akuapem in Ghana’s Eastern Region.

Inspire to Rise has also launched a social media menstrual health teaching campaign called ‘Period Health’ to empower girls and young women with on-demand content and to engage decision-makers in the system-level changes needed to foster inclusion and reduce period poverty in Ghana.

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