LOCAl organisation, Young Achievement Sports for Development (YASD)'s project of teaching young girls to make and distribute reusable sanitary pads in Harare's Hatcliffe Extension has attracted the interest of a research student from Osaka University in Japan.
Wakana Koshio, PhD student at the University, arrived in the country over a week ago and has already been to Hatcliffe Extension and will also visit Mbare and Ruwa where the pads were distribute d.
Koshio is studying towards a PhD in International Collaboration and Development Studies; and is working on a research topic titled Menstrual Health in Zimbabwe.
"Professor Okada in Japan connected me with YASD on their project of helping women make and distribute reusable sanitary pads in Hatcliffe. I also understand they are giving sanitary pads in Mbare and Ruwa so I am looking forward to visit all these places as I carry out my research," Koshio said.
"I want to understand why they started the project and why they chose to teach women to sew the reusable pads for themselves as well as to distribute pads. I found it quite interesting.
"My stay in Zimbabwe has been very good and I am going to be here for about four weeks."
YASD, who are the custodians of the Homeless World Cup in Zimbabwe, partnered with the French embassy in Zimbabwe on this which sought to teach young women in Harare’s Hatcliffe Extension to make reusable sanitary pads with the aim of empowering them economically back in 2021 amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
Known as Female Resilience Economic Empowerment (FREE), the YASD project started in October 2021 by training 100 young women to run and manage businesses as well as to make sanitary pads which have been distributed in the community for free.
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The local organisation felt this was a perfect programme to empower young mothers, who had come out of their sports training programmes by teaching then to sew and sell sanitary pads.
"Young women who were part and parcel of sports programmes and have become mothers are the ones that got the skills in terms of sewing. But in terms of distribution of the pads all of the girls from our sports training programmes benefited. We had young girls who went to Qatar ahead of the World Cup and received the sanitary pads," YASD programmes coordinator Petros Chatiza said.
"For us as an organisation it's quite exciting to have someone from Japan taking interest in our work. I think the research will enable us to see what we are doing good and what areas we need to improve.
"Just having someone all the way from Japan authenticates the small work that we are doing here in Zimbabwe and we continue to look for partnership and collaboration opportunities of this nature."
