In commemoration of the annual United Nations World Menstrual Hygiene Day, over 600 schoolgirls have been empowered on how they can take care of their menstrual health and given sanitary pads by Girls Talk With Ariyiike, a charity initiative led by CEO, actress, and event host, Ariyiike Owolagba.
The sanitary towels project, which took place at Abeokuta Grammar School, saw healthcare practitioners engage young schoolgirls between the ages of 10 and 17 years, on their menstrual health and how to manage it, as well as, distributed sanitary towels to them.
The outreach was done in partnership with the Office of the First Lady of Ogun state and Procter & Gamble, makers of Always Nigeria.
According to Ariyiike, the focus of the initiative is to get the girls, especially in the rural areas, sensitised on menstrual health and hygiene to mitigate the incidence of them dropping out of school.
She said, Research shows that hygiene and sanitation problems as a result of economic status, as well as cultural taboos around menstruation, lead to many girls missing an average of four school days every month.
This means that in a year, many girls miss over a month of school, which leads to them falling behind academically and dropping out altogether. This is why there is a disparity in how young girls school attendance is so wildly different from young boys, and we decided to get busy closing this attendance gap.
Reminiscing, she said the first edition was in 2020, and we visited Iseyin District Grammar School, Iseyin, Oyo state. For the second edition held in 2021, we visited Oregun Junior and Senior High School.
The third edition was in 2022, and we visited Radiance B&G College, Agbado, Ogun State where we caught the attention of the First Lady of Ogun State and we had a conversation about partnership for the 4th edition.
I was also invited to the girl child event put together by the First Lady to mentor the girls in celebration of the International Day of the girl child in 2022.
PUNCH