Female students of Northern Star SHS receive menstrual hygiene education

The Heeyah Baquree Foundation, a young people-led Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), working with and for young people, has offered menstrual hygiene education to female students of Northern Star Senior High School in Wa in the Upper West Region.

The students were taken through sessions on how to take care of themselves when they are in their periods to avoid contracting infections while ensuring environmental safety by proper disposal of menstrual discharges.

They were also taken through sessions on ways to build their self-confidence and self-esteem and how to decipher between negative and positive peer influences and making the right choices thereof.

The students were also supported with menstrual cups to help manage their menstrual flows.

The Founder and Director of the Foundation, Fathiyat Mohammed Numbo said the decision to support the students with sanitary goods was informed by the need to help end "period poverty" in the face of rising costs of sanitary pads in the country.

She said the prices of sanitary pads had gone a notch higher in the market marking nearly impossible for vulnerable girls, especially in rural settings to afford them.

"Sanitary products are very expensive, the import tax is very 'crazy', it is over 20 percent [and] it makes it almost impossible for a girl in a rural community to actually access them," she said.

Madam Numbo noted that the menstrual hygiene awareness session was necessary to sensitize the students to live's realities to enable them to avoid falling victim to the illness of a society fraught with many problems.

"The reason we felt that it is important for us to initiate this program is: these are young people. It is very easy for their lives to take a negative or positive turn.

"They just need the right resources, the right people, and just the push and the back," she explained.

She, therefore, stated that the initiative was in line with the global agenda for 2030 to create safe spaces for young people to reach their potential without hindrances and societal injustices.

"I hope that from this moment onwards, some of them would unlearn some of the things they learned wrongly and then relearn and put them into practice.

"And I hope the school would also be willing to collaborate with us and other organizations to help shape these young people into beautiful people, responsible people in the nearest future," she expressed hopes.

Madam Flora Eledi Deonuba, a House Mistress of the school, expressed appreciation to the Heeyah Baquree Foundation for extending education and support with sanitary goods to the students.

She said it was especially important at the time when prices of sanitary pads were skyrocketing and leaving many girls in distress when they are in their menstrual periods.

She expressed hopes that the students would put the knowledge gained into practice to help curb the menace of adolescent pregnancies which she identified as a major problem the school was confronted with.

"Especially boy-girl relationships. One of our problems here is teenagers getting pregnant. So I believe in collaboration with your foundation, in the nearby future, you will be coming around and not only giving us reproductive health talks, but then their social life as well, and then their educational life as well as their religious life," she said.

The students also expressed their happiness about the education and the sanitary cups given to them to help manage their menstrual flows.