Women, we are special,
we have a superpower and that superpower we experience every month
and we menstruate every month, and we have to manage that
in such a way, in a dignified way, and we have to own it.
My name is Mary Elizabeth Ramosaea
I am from Solomon Islands.
I am a consultant specifically doing
menstrual health and hygiene.
My mum is everything to me.
Growing up, I saw she's always committed to fighting for women's
causes and women's voices in the Solomon Islands.
Actually, those values I've learned from my mother.
I do believe that relationship between a mother and a daughter is very significant.
They can provide the right information so that the daughters can grow up
well and they can experience a better life.
In Solomon Islands, 85 percent of our total population
live in the rural areas where there is a lack of access
to menstrual pads. Women use
leaves, coconut husks, and sometimes they barely use anything
they use, perhaps like rags and dirty clothes.
Girls who are at school, they didn't go to school at all.
They have to stay in their homes.
We have to come up with something that is more helpful, healthier,
and also will help all these women to manage their periods
in a dignified way.
I decided to pursue this whole idea
of starting a social enterprise, focusing basically on menstral health.
So the Kaleko SteiFree pad is made out of fabrics.
It's an idea that was already developed
by organizations that already spread
the the message of using reusable pad.
It's just taking that design and converting it into something
that suits our women. And that's what I did.
I'm Paul Howorth, I'm a co-founder and director of Red Hat Impact,
an organization that works with impact enterprises across the Asia-Pacific
Red Hat impact got involved with Mary through our work
for Pacific Rise and the Criterion Institute.
For Mary, the biggest challenge was really getting access to affordable
and reliable supply of the materials that she needs to make reusable pads.
So Mary and other enterprises
working in the Pacific on producing the same products,
they got together and worked out that if they could find a way
to bulk purchase materials, they could get more reliable supply.
So in practical terms, what it ended up looking like was nothing more complicated
than us being able to purchase
a single large order of two different types of material
and have those shipped to a hub in Brisbane.
Mary wanted this to be a transformative step for her business.
COVID came at a very interesting time
when we decided to really upscale and shift not only our production,
but our thinking of making a wider reach into communities.
And so initially in 2020,
I think that was one of the hardest time for us.
I was very uncertain about the future of the production
of Kaleko SteiFree.
Through our networks
with the Australian government program called Pacific Rise,
we were fortunate enough to think through the opportunities
and the processes to get in products
from overseas into our country.
We'd put all the groundwork in place to be able to mobilize quite quickly.
So we got our stock into Australia before any major supply chain
disruptions started hitting Australia
and then we've been able to ship pretty regularly out to the Pacific
because we've got stocks sitting in Brisbane.
I think that was a huge answer
to some of the problems we've faced in 2020.
So the the production continues despite a COVID
a lot of women when it comes to things that are quite new
or very bright , they will just store it away.
And so we decided to shift away from the colorful fabrics into using darker colors.
But then I figured that it's also important to reinstate the colors.
We can teach women that it's OK to appreciate
something that is new and it's OK to to look good
and to feel good, to be confident about yourself.
Apart from producing the Kaleko pads,
we advocate strongly that menstrual health will not go unnoticed.
Women were initially hesitant to come forward.
That kind of mindset, I've seen it very much
prevalent in almost all the communities that I've worked in.
People hardly talked about it openly.
Even women hardly talked about it.
And that's why the relationship
between a mother and a daughter is such a powerful dynamic.
If a mother and a daughter had that comfortable
relationship, they can talk about it.
But as we kept going back and just sitting down, having one
on one conversation, we begin to see women coming out more and start talking to us.
And even men, they were, you know, supporting their wives.
We all have a part to play
making sure that menstrual health and hygiene is accepted.