 For women we are special, we have a superpower and that superpower we experience every month and we menstruate every month and we have to manage that in such a way, in a dignified way and we have to own it. My name is Mary Elizabeth Ramosia, I am from Solomon Islands. I am a consultant specifically doing menstrual health and hygiene. My mom is everything to me. Growing up I saw she's always committed to fighting for women's cause and women's voices in Solomon Islands. Actually those values I've learned from my mother. I do believe that relationship between a mother and a daughter is very significant. They can provide the right information so that the daughters can grow up well and they can experience a better life. You are raised by a powerful woman, you have some amazing things in your life. In Solomon Islands 85% of our total population live in the rural areas where there is a lack of access to menstrual pads. Women use leaves, coconut husks, sometimes they barely use anything, they use perhaps like rugs and dirty clothes. Girls who are at school, they didn't go to school at all, they have to stay in their homes. We have to come up with something that is more helpful, healthier and also will help all these women to manage their periods in a dignified way. So kids here at Calico, avoid the expensive cost to a village, we'll show you how for using three to five years. I decided to pursue this whole idea of starting a social enterprise, focusing basically on menstrual health. So the Calico Stay Free pad is made out of fabrics. It's an idea that was already developed by organisations that already spread the message of using reusable pad. It's just taking that design and converting it into something that suits our women and that's what I did. I'm Paul Hough, I'm a co-founder and director of Red Hat Impact, an organisation that works with impact enterprises across the Asia Pacific. Red Hat Impact got involved with Mary through our work for Pacific Rise and the Criterion Institute. For Mary the biggest challenge was really getting access to affordable and reliable supply of the materials that she needs to make reusable pads. So Mary and other enterprises working in the Pacific on producing the same products, they got together and worked out that if they could find a way to bulk purchase materials they could get more reliable supply. So in practical terms what it ended up looking like was nothing more complicated than us being able to purchase a single large order of two different types of material and have those shipped to a hub in Brisbane. Mary wanted this to be a transformative step for her business. It came at a very interesting time when we decided to really upscale and shift not only our production but our thinking of making a wider reach into communities. And so initially in 2020 I think that was one of the hardest times for us. I was very uncertain about the future of the production of Calico Stay Free. Through our networks with the Australian Government Programme called Pacific Rise we were fortunate enough to think through the opportunities and the processes to get in products from overseas into our country. We put all the groundwork in place to be able to mobilise quite quickly. So we got our stock into Australia before any major supply chain disruption started hitting Australia and then we've been able to ship pretty regularly out to the Pacific because we've got stock sitting in Brisbane. I think that was a huge answer to some of the problems we've faced in 2020. So the production continues despite COVID. A lot of women when it comes to things that are quite new or very bright they would just tore it away and so we decided to shift away from the colourful fabrics into using darker colours. But then I figured that it's also important to reinstate colours. We can teach women that it's okay to appreciate something that is new and it's okay to look good and to feel good, to be confident about yourself. We're using the right product. We go, wow, we've got it now, we've got fishing, we've got to teach the school now. Apart from producing the colourful pads, we advocate strongly that menstrual health will not go unnoticed. Women were initially hesitant to come forward. That kind of mindset, I've seen it very much prevalent in almost all the communities that I've worked in. People hardly talked about it openly, even women hardly talked about it and that's why the relationship between a mother and a daughter is such a powerful dynamic. If a mother and a daughter have that comfortable relationship, they can talk about it. As we kept going back and just sitting down and having one-on-one conversation, we began to see women coming out more and start talking to us and even men, they were supporting their wives. We all have a part to play making sure that menstrual health and hygiene is accepted. Two, three, go!