73. A Period Should End a Sentence, Not a Girls Education - & Yes, That Happens.

In this episode I am joined by Sophie Ascheim, a founding member of The Pad Project, a non-profit dedicated to ending period poverty and the stigma around periods globally. Sophie was also an executive producer on the Oscar winning documentary, Period. End of Sentence.

We discuss the ways in which The PAD Project aims to end period poverty in India and create wider access to menstrual products. One of the biggest issues in developing countries is that not only is there such a taboo around periods, making women uncomfortable using pads or tampons instead of rags or nothing at all, but there also isn't access to these products because they're too expensive or they just aren't physically made available.

If India enrolled just 1% more girls in school, their GDP would rise by 5.5 billion dollars.

"In many communities in India, parents have to choose between buying pads for their daughter or buying a week's worth of milk for their entire family. When you really compare those, there isn’t an option. You feed your family. This dilemma contributed to girls dropping out of school at a really young age. And that was where I first got interested - periods contributing to a lack of education in developing communities."

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Resources:

Netflix Documentary: Period. End of Sentence.

Amazon Prime Documentary: Menstrual Man

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Contact Info:

Website: www.thepadproject.org

Instagram: @thepadproject