Coca-Cola Beverages Uganda (CCBU) has partnered with the National Union of Disabled Persons of Uganda’s (NUDIPU) to help provide reusable to over 250 girls in various schools around the country.
The partnership will see 80 women with disability given skills to make the reusable sanitary pads that will later be distributed by NUDIPU to the various schools in eight districts.
Speaking during the handover of a shs10 million dummy cheque, NUDIPU CEO, Esther Kyozira said the partnership will help support a project in which several women with disabilities will be trained to make reusable sanitary towels that will support retention of girls in school by promoting menstrual hygiene.
“Women and girls with disabilities have been dropping out of school because many of them cant afford the cost of sanitary towels and many of them end up using clothes or newspapers while others just see their clothes stained. We thought we needed to do something to help our own,” Kyozira said.
"If the rest of the girls are dropping out of school because of the same reason of lack of sanitary towels, then the challenge to girls with disabilities is higher. We think this will help enable production of reusable towels which can be used more than once and are environmentally friendly.”
The NUDIPU CEO explained that women who will be skilled to make the sanitary towels will always remain with the skills that they will always remain with to enable them earn some income.
A study by UNESCO found that one in 10 girls in Sub-Saharan Africa miss school while on their period with some girls missing as much as 10-20% of school days during a school term.
According to Ketty Aero, the chairperson for NUDIPU said women with disability face many challenges and lack of skills is among them.
“Once you give a disabled woman a skill, it will ensure her self-sustainability and wellbeing in society,” Aero said..
Pearl Nimusiima, the CCBU Public Affairs and Communications Manager said the partnership is part of their efforts to give back to the community where they operate.
“We have a duty to contribute positively to society. We have supported a number of different collaborations, but we are honoured to be doing this with NUDIPU. It is a partnership that is close to our hearts,” Nimusiima said.
She noted that Coca-Cola Beverages Uganda aims to create greater shared opportunity for the business and the communities it serves across the value-chain through economic inclusion initiatives such as the support for training and skilling of women and girls.
“Opportunity is more than just money, it’s about a better future for people and their communities everywhere on the African continent. We aim to create inclusive growth opportunities for women, youth, and people with disabilities by defining a consistent way of implementing economic inclusion programmes, drawing on leading practice for implementing these programmes.”
According to officials, CCBU will be providing funds to support sourcing of trainers, purchase of project inputs, and promotion of branding and visibility, NUDIPU will be tasked in ensuring proper implementation of the project through identifying and registering women with disabilities to participate in the activities of the project, distributing re-usable sanitary pads to the selected schools, and demonstrations on how re-usable sanitary pads are made, will be conducted to realise a multiplier effect.