Home-made Sanitary Ware Empowers Girls To Stay in School

PLAN International is a global organization that works to increase the rights and access to gender-responsive, adolescent-friendly, and inclusive menstrual health management. The organization set up Pad Banks in schools and has also partnered with local advocacy groups to train and educate young women and girls on menstrual health and hygiene, all in hopes to address stigma, misinformation, and period poverty.

Village Health Teams are groups of community health workers helping rural women access family planning services. They travel from home to home offering counseling, education and connection to the resources women need but struggle to access, including condoms and pills, often all without having to visit a health facility. VHTs have reached several thousand residents, both with short and long-term contraceptive methods.

be artsy's Rato Baltin project uses culturally relevant education, menstrual kit distribution, and engages religious leaders to challenge discriminatory practices against those who menstruate. Since launching in 2017, the group has reached 80,000 people and distributed over 5,500 menstrual cups, while simultaneously helping shift perspectives around menstruating.

She Deserves Uganda provides menstrual hygiene education to young girls and an organic aromatherapy solution to pain from period cramps they call The Cramp Relief Droppers, as a safer and more affordable alternative to traditional over-the-counter painkillers. The group has provided menstrual health education to over 10,000 girls across 50 schools and has distributed over 1,540 units of The Cramp Relief Droppers.

To reduce unplanned pregnancies, Delaware "embarked on an ambitious experiment" that worked to eliminate barriers that prevented women from pursuing alternative forms of birth control, such as cost and convenience. After two years, rates of unplanned pregnancies decreased by 15 percent.

Rwanda has implemented a comprehensive, community-driven cervical cancer prevention program combining door-to-door screening campaigns, free HPV vaccination, and health insurance reforms to cover cancer treatment. Since the initiaives launched, six districts have achieved the World Health Organization’s elimination targets, putting Rwanda on track to become the first African country to eliminate cervical cancer by 2027.

Following the national rollout of the HPV vaccine, teams emerged to manage critical components of the rollout, including supply chain management, education, training and data collection. Immunization specialists were also tasked with educating the public on vaccine-related myths and misinformation to assure people getting the shot was safe and necessary. With the help of these outreach strategies, the team managed to vaccinate 387,645 girls.

The Help the Women Campaign raises awareness and provides free cervical cancer screenings. Since forming in 2021, the Campaign has reached 30,000 women and provided 500 screenings. The Campaign also led successful advocacy efforts that convinced the federal government to incorporate the HPV vaccine into the national immunization program.

Local community health volunteers make healthcare more accessible in rural areas by providing services like ambulance taxi rides, which quickly transport people in hard-to-reach areas to clinics when there’s an emergency. These volunteers also share medical information to promote healthy behaviors among those living in villages. There are currently about 100,000 volunteers serving rural communities across the country.

Amidst a lack of law enforcement in remote areas, the Emmonak Women’s Shelter has begun training people in small villages to become victim resource advocates to connect those who have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault with shelter and care.