About Her Flow Initiative

In 2021, I watched a girl in my hometown slowly pull away from her own school.

She had started her period and her family could not afford the products to manage it. So she stopped coming to class. She stopped spending time with the other students. I watched it wear her down, physically and mentally, and all of it traced back to something that costs money her family did not have.

That was July 2021, and that is when I started Her Flow Initiative.

Why Sondu

Sondu is my hometown. I believe that if you want to change lives, you start somewhere you are known. People trust you at home, the community shows up, and what you learn there travels with you to places you have never been. If we can get this right for the girls we know, we can do it for the girls we have not met yet.

What has happened since

Since July 2021, more than 2,000 girls have received support from Her Flow. We give girls menstrual cups and washable pads because they last. One set can carry a girl through many school terms, so she is not starting over every month.

The girls keep coming back. Some return to restock their reusable products. Others come just to talk, and that is where our mentorship program does its work: a girl who has someone to ask stops guessing about her own body. Alongside that, we run Kitabu kwa Msichana for books and learning materials, and Dignity Wear for the basics a girl needs to feel clean and comfortable.

One of the girls we support finished school at the top of her class. After her national exams, she came to find me. She thanked me for the menstrual products she had been given, and told me she had not missed a single day of school in three years. She believed it was a big part of why she performed the way she did. She never had to wonder how she would manage her period that month, and she never lost three or four days of class. That is the result I am working toward for every girl we reach.

Who we are

Her Flow Initiative is run by a team of about ten community members, each with a defined role in getting the work done. So far, most of this work has been funded from our own pockets, because we believed the girls could not wait for us to find funding first.

We are a community-based group and our registration application is with the government. We are waiting on their response, and we will update this page the day it comes through.

I want Her Flow to stay independent of political affiliation, and I will protect that as we grow.

Where we are going

Over the next 12 months, we plan to double the number of girls we support. We know where to go, we know how to find donors, and we have built the credibility to do it. We are also looking at schools outside Sondu, so more girls can have what the girls here already do.

If you want to be part of that, the most direct way is to donate.