17/05/2026
3%.
That is how many women of menstrual age in Zumba Kwata had reliable access to sanitary products when the RISE4Women project began.
Not 30%. Not 13%. 3%.
We say "menstrual health" in development spaces like it is a solved problem. Like it belongs in a footnote. Like the conversation has moved on.
It has not moved on for the women of Shiroro LGA.
Before our dignity kit distribution, periods in these communities were managed in silence — with rags, with leaves, with nothing, with shame. Not because women didn't want better. Because it had never arrived.
And then something shifted.
After the kits reached them, women began doing something that had never happened before in community settings: they talked about it. Openly. Together.
That is what dignity does. It doesn't just solve a physical problem. It breaks a silence. It tells a woman: your body is not a secret you are supposed to carry alone.
97% of women were managing without. And the world kept moving.
We are not here to take credit for a kit. We are here to put the 3% on record — because if we don't name what was missing, no one can justify what is still needed.
Women and girls in Shiroro LGA deserve sustained, serious investment.
Not someday. Now.
