This is Joy and her classmates. Joy is 12 years old and goes to school at Tabaka Academy. She has had her period for just over a year. Until the recent roll out of Global School Partners’ Young Women’s Program, Joy would miss one full week of school a month due to her period. Joy and the other young women are too embarrassed to go to school while they have their period.

World Bank estimates that lack of proper sanitation products and facilities impacts at least 500 million women and girls globally, of those UNESCO estimates that 131 million girls are out of school of which 100 million are girls of high school age. The Young Women’s Program allows Joy and her fellow students to attend school every week each month, by providing underwear and pads for the girls to wear and sanitary bins to properly dispose of the pads. Joy is now able to receive an education that is not interrupted by her period. Since the implementation of the Young Women’s Program the academic results of Joy and the other young women in her class has improved.