 Kusuwe wajad ni majana, nimatailita kuja 1 papatani, 1 ay시ijata So, meza hana na hana kuwa Beth okotu wajad pokuwa And jia wajad na ahata nikata Nika nezakutu kuwa kwa majana? Kdevikumia muka? Kuko wa hana na miha, na meza Englisha Betyokva Ni majana, kwae vaibu mezi Namakami Betyokva I'm happy to be in this place to just highlight the people of the things that I do. I have two major things that I would like to talk about today. I'd like to talk about a ministry that I'm involved in. It's called Widow's Transformation Ministry, and then later on I'll talk about Ahadi reusable pads. Widow's Transformation Ministry was started by a lady called Mrs. Kabasella, also known as Mamamore. Mamamore got widowed, and when she got widowed she found that she was in many troubles. It was fortunate for her because she was an educated woman, and at the time she retired she got another job, which was better than the first job that she was doing. But she had an urge in her heart to reach out to widows because widows can be transformed and be able to stand on their own. Because we find that in this society, especially in western and as now we are changing, women when they lost their husbands, they were really in a bad situation. And you as a woman, what inspired you to be part of this association that helps widows and also what inspired you to start Ahadi Foundation that helps the gods in this society? What helped me, what inspired me to join widows was the passion I saw in Mrs. Omore. It's not that she had Mrs. Kabasella, it's not that she had much, but she would just gather widows who are less fortunate and prepare a meal for them and just listen to them. And many were transformed, I know particularly of two women who could not even afford transport from Dandora to Kayole to come for the meetings. They would walk and by the time they reach Kayole the meeting is over and they just in time to say grace, they could collect offerings of maybe 10 shillings or 20 and that is what would be given to go back. These two women have built houses in their rural area. So they are transformed and they are able to stand on their own. Trusting God and working hard and looking for opportunities so that they are not dependent and when they are empowered even their in-laws cannot mess around with them. Okay, so apart from being inspired by these two fenomenal women who are changing their lives of widows is there a personal story attached to it that made you decide that me as Beth I'll be part of this? Okay, I got widowed in 2006 and I was very angry for a long time and I didn't even want to be associated with widows. I remember one time when I was coming from Ushagu sister-in-law told me welcome to the club and so I was so mad I asked her which club, the widows club and I was still hurting. So I just said I don't belong to that club and I just closed but when I came and saw this lady and how she was coming up and helping people I decided why not and she also trusted me and she wanted me to help her because she's a woman I knew when I was young she was a bit elderly we were staying together in the same estate. And how are you able to separate yourself from that bitterness from that heart to becoming a person who inspires others in the society? God dealt with me in that heart because when a woman's husband dies they think why me because it's so nice to go to other women and encourage them when their husband has died you don't think that yours may also die so I decided that I'll just trust God to bring me up because I knew there was life ahead I had children and I knew I had to stand for myself I know where I come from I didn't have anybody really to depend upon okay my parents were there they could support me emotionally but I really need to do things so that I would be afloat others I would belong there by now I know one particular lady she died 7 months later because it was too much for her to take so that is what inspired me to come up and join Mrs. Kabasehla yes and so we meet regularly once a month this is a pastor called Reverend Washira he has given us the church where we meet free of charge he doesn't charge then we just have a few few people who help us to buy him food so every time we meet we have meals very nice meals you know he does also they like to be pampered they would love to so they come and we talk we air out we help each other in the issues that we pass through every day and there are many issues that we do pass through apart from the in-laws and the society you have your own personal needs you need to survive you need to be empowered economically you need to deal with issues of your children you need to deal with your own emotions and many other so you find that some widows they are dispossessed from their husband's home and so when these widows come we help them we haven't gone so far as in going to feeder to help us advocate and things like that but that is what made me so when our founder was moving to Eldoret she you know she just brought me in slowly she didn't ask me come they have got involved until now I'm there okay that's really nice and you're also our founder of Ahadi Reusable Pulse so before we get to Ahadi Reusable Pulse maybe you can tell us your experience as a girl or what motivated you to form this organization that helps girls okay as a girl may I grew up in Nairobi and we were living in Jeriko in Jeriko the houses are small and we were many and we had relatives in the house so my parents were not poor they could not afford many things luxury and the issue of pads is atabu so you find that girls are shy to ask their mother for pads or even to talk about it menstruation was such a secret and a Wu thing so when I was in Form 3 we used to go to the reading room at a church called St. Joseph's in Jeriko and one time I was just seated and reading and doing my homework 9 o'clock is home time I found myself in a pool of blood so embarrassed there is so much shame and stigma around menstruation so from that time I wasn't able to go back to the library because I didn't know how it would be me my grades started falling I was in a day school so later on I found that it's either my career I wanted to be a teacher or I just now live in shame I just took courage and I went back nobody asked me so from that time it rang in my heart that we need to do some no later on when I grew up was coming towards menopause the available solutions were not satisfactory for me so I had to improvise pads I'm also a teacher but as a teacher I was in a boy school so the thing didn't really magnify itself in my eye so later on when I came to this myself I found that hey there's a problem then I started researching on what can be used and that's how I came with this I realized from research that 2.8 million girls in Kenya cannot afford pads and they need to leave school for one way or another many have fallen by the way said because for pads they go to border border men or men they get pregnant and HIV then they cannot make it so for this reason I thought why don't I come up with an affordable solution that can help sustained girls so that they can stay in school for one more year these pads can last for one year plus other months so what makes them different from the normal pads that maybe are sold in the supermarkets and the shops the difference is that these pads are reusable you can wash them properly we don't have such a big problem of water in Nairobi and a lot of the counties I know there's some dry places but a woman is able to get at least 5 litre for water to wash her pads and because women have been using all sorts of things they cannot afford the regular pads that are in the shops they are expensive but they cannot afford but this ones though the initial cost is high but they end up cheaper because you can use them for more years than that and they have other benefits also like they save the environment a woman disposes or whatever they use in a year so if in Kenya we have 22 million women menstruating tell me about the environment how it will be messed so apart from providing the pads to the girls in the society is there any form of education that you offer to the girls and also to the boys when we do menstrual health management we put both boys and girls because we are demystifying the issue of menstruation and when it comes to now the very details then we can have girls alone on how to maintain menstrual health hygiene I also do training and counseling to these vulnerable girls and I concentrated so much in the lockdowns especially the first lockdown I realized that girls are getting pregnant and they are falling by the wayside so God helped me I did almost 5 outreaches one was in Kisumu another one was in Karyubangisa and three were in Kiambio and God gave me the idea to reach out because I already had the solution so I just invited people to come and support because you can buy two pads for two girls to cost you only 1,000 and you will maintain that girl for one year in school if she finishes one year and she is informed three she is likely to say what animal is from four in my back and we inject that in them we teach them self defense through box girl organization and the stances in boxing are really encouraging for example there is a stance that they do like this it's called God it causes you to focus so the focus on the education the focus on the career of the future and now keep going so when they are on God they will God against all these other things and remain focused so is there like a specific when reaching out to the girls do you reach out to every girl in Kenya is a specific group that you focus on it's so easy to identify girls who cannot afford pads me main area is Kiambio kijiji because they will just come and ask and already vulnerable girls are there you can find them how did I reach out to Kiambio this one lady who came to my house to help me in housework so one day she could not come and her daughter came and she was in lockdown so I asked her do you know of girls who have become pregnant because it was all over news and she told me so through some more organization I was able to do an outreach to girls who had gotten pregnant to give them pads so that they empowered now they don't have to worry about pads they can go out and look for view so is how then now we reach to the other girls who are young and in school starting from age 14 to 18 so we do we do outreach so I ask people to come and support through cash or in kind I have women who are empowered and there are big women also in the society to come and talk to the girls I have one girl she has an organization called slay healthy she talks about vaginal health I have Mrs. Waweru she talks about questions girls would ask and I also teach them about personal care and I also counsel them on how they can take care of themselves and in your raising matters because you have dealt with this issue for quite some time maybe you can explain to us how menstrual health and menstrual awareness and also the provision of this pad how that is affecting the girl child positively I would start from the conclusion from the girls that we reached out none of them fell out they all came back to school when the schools were open and I would really clap for the people who supported us the headlines were how girls are pregnant for the exams we can find some girls are having exams in the maternity some girls are having exams in places where they shouldn't be because of the lockdown and the effect of not having pads and also the craminess so I would really like to do some more in the coming few few months but unless people come in to join with me it will be very slow so far we have reached since I started our hard pads we have reached almost 1000 we have had in our last outreach kukakula came and gave us drinks because what we need is some drinks they are aspiring MP for that area gave us the hall and then I donated the pads and people also helped me to donate the pads at the end of the day I had a shortfall I didn't make any profit I am not making any profit but because this month I have gotten somebody who is buying pads maybe you can demonstrate to us how to use the pads ok this is reusable pads many people ask me how come they are reusable they are reusable because they are made of cloth these are just cloth they are like our clothes but these are special this top layer is called fleece soft and comfortable so it doesn't have chemicals also so what is inside what is inside is a cotton blanket I'll just call it a cotton blanket but it is an absorbable layer like the normal pad yes so this when the menstrual fluid goes in it is soaked and you use it now as a normal pad you will just know that now it's my time for changing so apart from the fleece we have the cotton bunting we have an oil cloth that helps to make sure that there is no leak and then this bottom part is there just to make it look nice to finish so once a girl is in her periods she will be having there are four pads there are four pads inside here ok and this is a reusable bag also and it is waterproof so a lady is likely to use two pads in the day so she will carry one pad inside here and once she is wearing so when she feels that she needs to change she will go to the bathroom and use this one she will just fold it in there is a way to fold in so that it doesn't leak so once she has locked it she will be able to put it here and we tell him that they should not be ashamed of their periods whatever they are using so she will just come and they should not feel that ok on her periods don't make embarrass them don't laugh at them so she keeps in her bag and she goes home in the evening she has a bucket she will just come and in menstrual health we teach them to take her bath at least twice morning and evening she will take it out so after 15 minutes maybe they are likely to be two pads she will pick the pads and just finia out the dirty water press out the dirty water once you press out the dirty water it will use less water so you take cleaner water and rinse a bit then the water will be rather clean now you put soap and wash you can use ordinary soap you can use the soaps that are available but no hot water and then you wash you rinse when the water is clean you just hang them out we tell them there is no shame in hanging out your pads and in any case these pads I believe they are quite cute so just hold them here with a peg in the sun the sun will sun it as your pads and you are good to go you keep them dry and you will be able to use them for many months teaching and making the girls child understand there is no shame in your menstrual period but when you go to the slums or go to the areas that you are donating these pads you find girls who have already gone through so much gone through so much shame so what is the process of educating them what does your organization do to make sure that apart from getting these pads the mentality on menstrual health is changed we talk to them if we had time I could have shown you clips but maybe for next time we talk to the girls I am a mother and I ended up myself to them as a mother and the other ladies that we work with we even have Ahadi Baba so we just talk to them and tell them that you don't have to live in the past you look forward see what you can do now that we have free education we have not started leaving them to go back to school because you find some girls have had even pregnancy some have done miscarriage some have even died in the process because they are doing backdoor abortions so we just encourage them we talk to them when they come we take each individual case and we have not found anybody that we need to hand over maybe to another organization that can handle the scope of what they are going through but I have counselors with me women who are also interested in this so what are some of the cases that you face through in the slums that the girls go through and what is the most extreme case that you have dealt with so far the girls that I have dealt with who have had an issue were 10 girls who were pregnant and they dropped out of school I just looked for them this lady Mama Kamu I just told them it was Chana Waluwameza they were more than I could handle I wanted only 10 and also with COVID restrictions so they came and we talked and now they are called a hardy girls they empowered also in the slums there are rape cases and that is why we were teaching them self defense the box girl people we teach them self defense one of the first self defense is to scream just scream don't be embarrassed shout out that will be your first defense and then others will fall maybe you can please teach us again after screaming after screaming after screaming you can pull out a stance normally the houses in the slums they are not at the walls they are concrete people will just come so what I am understanding is that you guys are not only about menstrual health but you are all about the culture maybe you can list some of the activities that happen in a hardy apart from donating and giving out pads okay train women in the slums to make pads now Fundisha Kushauna I am on my second girl right now the first one has really gone beyond me she has gone and gotten a job she is earning maybe a lot more than I because you find that man is almost like a donor organization I need to rely on other people I am on my second girl but I have also trained two men I have even now if we go to my workshop you will find there are two men and one girl the one man is doing the cutting because I got some work this other man is teaching and I trained me have always been teaching we had a sewing machine at home so I have skills though I am a teacher so I have trained those ones secondly we need to do we want it to do together at the middle of April to follow up on our girls because we told them they will come back we have quite a number of girls by the way so we would follow up have a cup of tea bachni chai namandazi bless the Lord for Kokakola they give us drinks so those are the things that we do you have also talked about boxing and self defense mechanisms and I am just wondering you have said that after you donate your pads you just don't leave the guards you have to remember the Islam that they come back we have their phone numbers the people who brought them can still follow them because even their parents won't just allow them to go anywhere though some girls can sneak so we just follow them up so when they come back do they come back to be part of a hadi or they come back just to say I am grateful how is your organization our organization does not have but we had set rules because also we are evolving we just go to caves they will give me caves then I will have my product on the supermarket it wasn't working that way and I still needed to reach out so they will come for activities maybe we haven't arranged but when they are going to come back for these girls they will just have activities they will play ball, they will talk these three groups will discuss how was their school term and what are their grades what are the changes that you have noticed from the time you started this organization the girls are confident they are not afraid that they are menstruating and the boys in the schools where we have gone they are not going to laugh at them I just asked the boys one day the whole class how many of you would like to be fathers one day all of them and how many of you would like to be mothers all of them then the only way you will become a father at the right time if you are healthy and menstruating then you can become a father so don't laugh at them they are your sisters and they are your future wives so we can find that the attitude is changing you see like when I came into the studio one of the guy was saying he is V2 they are not V2 they are just panties underwear and everybody needs them so we should not be ashamed about a natural process and it is beautiful when a girl if you are reached your age and maybe you are menstruating so you can go to India you would have gone to India to be treated so that's how it is ok that's really interesting and maybe you can tell us the materials that are used to stitch and to make the pads because we want to make this affordable we could have used a cotton fleece but cotton fleece is 600 shillings so is this something that you can make on your own okua home no like a common mananchi a common girl who doesn't have in areas like Pukot where we want to go and also in Kajiado we tell them they can make their own pads they can use cotton materials that they have at home they can use old sheets they can use t-shirts they can use towels and so we just like some organization in Kajiado calling me to come and train girls to make even in Kisumu so just go and train you look in your house and you see what is available by feeling because I will be having different pieces you can be able to tell which are the absorbent ones so you just put layers for yourself and you can use and you maintain hygiene so is that part of your education like how to make your own pads like when you are educating the girls on how to also make your own pads yeah that's one of the things that we do and in a month how many pads does a lady require the ones that we give four pads you see these four pads she can use but Aga would really need to build them up if Aga would have eight pads she can be very sure that she will not have any trouble she will always have one in her bag and then whatever happens she will just use she can change easily this is because sometimes the weather does not allow them to dry sunona they dry relatively fast in a fair weather but when it is wetish it might need a day or two to dry so if you have more it is better and you don't have to have all the more at once you can build up the stock and have you faced a case of rejection like have you gone to a place and wuka faced rejection maybe from the girls themselves like they are not willing to come out they are still in that kakun no, I haven't had that because the outreach that we have had the girls are really enthusiastic to come and they call their friends remember I started with one girl and she called her friends and then the area rep came to know about it we don't have capacity we will just go step by step so we took 10 girls the ones for mama girls then we took 25 then we took another 25 so like in another place the children saw me in a room I wanted to donate only 10 pounds but I felt in my spirit take 20 I think that is why God has blessed me with another job this time so what are some of the challenges that you face majority is that I really need people to come and support me by buying pads I would really love organizations that I have hold as in education for girls to come up and buy pads for the girls I know the government gives some in one school where I went the girls are given 3 pads a term they go home, there are 3 women in the house the next day the girl comes to the school and says teacher nipati a pad what happened you just given pads last week my mother took them so you see that is what we really need to go out especially if we can give them all one packet of reusable pads then they can have the other ones also just like a standby so you have talked about a student or a child that takes me to another question do you also educate them the mothers the parents on how to talk to their children when they get to that point in their life? not yet at the moment because I don't think that would be our area we are dealing with a girl directly and as I told you we are a small organization we better just concentrate on what we need to do so as you are winding up maybe you can talk to the girls out there who are listening to you what advice will you have for them or what would you tell them? I would really tell the girls that you can make it if I made it then you can make it period should not hold you back and in case you really need help you can even go to your local chief and tell them they would have programs but these are the days when girls can compete equally with the boys what a boy can do a girl can do because there are so many boys that are crying out here from the niya so we are pushing them but we are also telling the girls Musiachi liya right now you see Tanzania has a female president so why can't you become the next president of Kenya you can be the admissions of alliance girls you can even be the vice chancellor or the chancellor we had the chancellor of Kenyatta University so nothing should stop you and periods should not be anything that should hinder you in your path to your destiny our target is support her girl, help her fulfill and maximize her potential that would lead to her desired destiny all of us have a desired destiny so once you have identified that this is what you would like to be you can concentrate on it maybe you can also share where people can find you or if there is anyone who wants to reach out the easiest is my phone number maybe you can share it with us my phone number is a safari kumlain number it's 0723309229 I repeat 0723 309229 that is a safari kumlain we can communicate and see exactly how you can come in to help us support the girls then we also have a Facebook at Ahadi Pads is that how it said Ahadi Pads on Facebook Ahadi Pads on Facebook that you can find us very easily okay thank you so much Elizabeth history is really inspiring and on to Ahadi Reusable Pads so you can find us on Facebook at Ahadi Reusable Pads thank you so much for joining us and creating time to demonstrate and helping the girls in the society so that was Elizabeth Okos who is a phenomenal woman in the society who is helping girls in the slums and in the society to to know more about menstrual health menstrual health and also donating parts to the society so usibandu ke right about now we will take a short break but next on a discussion and don't forget to follow us on all our social media platforms at Y254 channel