Pad for girls campaign works to keep girls in the classroom

De Aar Solar Power, recently put their support behind a local NGO’s gender equality campaign, which aims to help provide equal access to education for girls.  The programme, ‘Pad for Girls’ campaign, helps teenager girls, who can’t afford to buy pads, get back to the classroom.

It’s been reported that over 80% of South African girls miss three to five days of school a month, because they do not have access to sanitary pads.  While the pressure is mounting on the government to provide free sanitary products to women and girls from poor communities, the solution has been left in the hands of NGO’s and corporate sponsors for now.

“Young girls, often choose not to attend school, due to the discomfort, as they don’t have the means of buying suitable sanitary wear,” explained Hlengiwe Radebe, Economic Development Manager for De Aar Solar Power.

De Aar Solar Power recently funded the purchase of over 2 000 packs of pads to assist the local campaign and distributed the care packs to High Schools situated in De Aar. Five schools were visit in during a campaign drive on 27 July 2018, these include: Orion High School, St Johns Primary School, Emthanjeni Higher Primary School, Monwabisi Senior Public School and Veritas High School.