Good menstrual hygiene management is important for girls and young women to reach their full potential. Making menstrual hygiene easy and accessible for girls in schools is an ongoing challenge. In Fiji, only a small proportion of schools have accessible and safe menstrual hygiene management (MHM) facilities. This makes it hard for young women and girls to continue their studies, often missing out days or even dropping out from school altogether.
Together with Habitat for Humanity Australia, supported by the DFAT-funded Water for Women Fund (2018-2022) we distributed menstrual hygiene packs and constructed MHM facilities in 7 primary schools and helped reduce absenteeism rates among female students by 80-90%.
Access to menstrual hygiene products and accessible infrastructure is only one part of the solution. There is still a lot of stigma and taboos surrounding periods especially in rural locations. To help break the silence and create greater awareness of the importance of good menstrual hygiene practice we produced a new comic book “Menstruation Made Easy!“.
Informed by our learnings throughout the Water for Women project, the Menstruation Made Easy comic book tells the story of Mere and how her school and community rallied to make sure she had the best environment possible to finish her education.
