PridePads Africa: Combatting Period Poverty At Home and Abroad

Op-ed By: Elizabeth Cleveland, Executive Director of PridePads Africa

More than 300 million people around the globe are menstruating at any given moment, yet tens of millions are unable to manage their menstruation comfortably, safely, and without shame. PridePads Africa is dedicated to fighting period poverty in Cameroon, ensuring that menstruation is never a barrier to education.

PridePads Africa

PridePads Africa, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit founded in Boulder in 2019, is dedicated to producing biodegradable menstrual pads and providing menstrual health education in northern Cameroon. Pads are produced locally by and for women, creating livelihood empowerment and entrepreneurial economic opportunities for ordinary Cameroonian girls and women. At the time of writing this piece, we have a team of ten in Cameroon, working with 12 schools and seven women’s groups in Ngaoundéré to destigmatize menstruation through education.

While conducting menstrual health education visits, our team found that girl students in Ngaoundéré regularly miss an average of five to seven days of school per month because of their period. This equates to missing 20% of instruction time annually. Menstrual products are an important but often overlooked school supply for many girls in Cameroon and often makes the difference between receiving an education or dropping out early.

At PridePads Africa, we use a three-pronged approach to create sustainable change:

1. Menstrual Health Education. Our team conducts outreach sessions on the importance of menstrual health and hygiene at local schools and community groups. Our curriculum is medically accurate and aims to destigmatize and demystify menstruation.

2. Free Menstrual Pads. During outreach sessions, participants are given PridePads free of charge. Our team visits each group regularly, ensuring a consistent supply of menstrual pads.

3. Economic Empowerment. We currently employ eight Cameroonian women who produce and package the pads and lead the menstrual health education seminars.

Missing school, work, or social commitments because of one’s period is not limited to Cameroon. Despite the misconception that period poverty is an issue that only plagues ‘developing’ countries, it is found in every country and every community around the world, even ours.

Period Poverty

Exacerbated by economic inequality, lack of menstrual health education, preexisting stigmas and taboos, and inadequate access to menstrual products and sanitation facilities, period poverty may look different across the world, but its root causes remain the same.

Period poverty is “the limited or inadequate access to menstrual products or menstrual health education as a result of financial constraints or negative socio-cultural stigmas associated with menstruation¹." It is often viewed as something that only occurs in the Global South, and Africa and the Indian subcontinent are the usual targets of campaigns to end period poverty. Documentaries like Period. End of Sentence. have helped bring attention to period poverty worldwide, but there is still a disconnect. Although the circumstances may be vastly different, many of the underlying reasons for or drivers of period poverty and poor menstrual health management (MHM) are the same for both high income countries and low- middle-income countries: economic inequalities, discrimination, stigmatization, and lack of adequate information and facilities.

Menstruation Education in Cameroon

Girls in low-and-middle-income countries like Cameroon are overwhelmingly under- and mis-informed about menstruation prior to their first period, and many religious and cultural practices perpetuate the idea that menstruation is a curse, disease, ailment, or demon/spiritual anomaly rather than a natural biological process. Because of the lack of formal menstruation education, mothers, other female family members, and peers are often the main sources of information for young girls. It is also common, particularly in rural areas, to have no source of information on menstruation at all.

“Although public health experts have assumed that girls receive pubertal-related guidance from parents or extended family, an increasing body of research suggests that in fact they often learn nothing about menarche before its onset and may even hide the arrival of their first menstrual period for fear of being punished for perceived sexual activity.”² Receiving formal, medically accurate menstruation education—like that provided by PridePads Africa—being the exception rather than the rule allows these harmful beliefs and practices to manifest in subsequent generations.

Engaging the youth via school visits is the priority of PridePads, but the team engages local women’s groups during school holidays as there is a need to educate older generations so that they may pass on this valuable information. Many of these community groups consist of local mothers, most of whom have not received MHM education themselves. In addition to providing a menstrual health education presentation, these seminars provide a space for women to ask questions and receive medically accurate answers regarding their menstrual cycle which they are encouraged to share with their whole families, not just fellow women and girls.

Students regularly share that the major barrier to remaining in school during their period is lack of supplies. Given that poverty is concentrated in the north of Cameroon,³ including the Adamawa region in which PridePads Africa's headquarters are located, financial hardship is often the reason why students do not have adequate supplies. Essential needs such as food, water, and shelter take priority for financially strained households, with period products coming in almost dead last, especially as men hold the purse strings in most families and don’t consider these products a necessity. To help alleviate this burden, PridePads Africa conducts regular visits to local schools and provides students locally produced pads free of charge.

Another issue many of us in the United States and other wealthy countries overlook is inadequate toilet facilities. Although they may be available, students regularly note that they try to avoid using the school toilets because they lack locks or waste receptacles and are unclean. With no place to properly dispose of menstrual products, they are less likely to change their pads frequently, thus increasing their likelihood of leaks and infection.

Bringing it Home to Boulder County

Periods are not cheap. In the United States, nearly one in four teens and one in three adults struggle to afford period products⁴ and menstruators of color, as well as those who are low-income, live in a rural area, are an adolescent or young adult, and/or non-binary are statistically more likely to experience higher rates of period poverty. The average American menstruator spends $13.25 per month on period products which equates to $6,360 pre-tax over their reproductive lifetime which is estimated to be between the ages of twelve and fifty-two⁵. These amounts account only for the items which collect menstrual blood. By including "items needed to cope with menstruation, like heating pads, pain relievers, birth control, and acne medications,"⁶ the Huffington Post estimates that the total lifetime cost of menstruation is $18,171⁷. The high cost of menstrual products means that many menstruators, particularly low-income mothers, must forgo or ration food in order to purchase said products.

According to the 2021 State of the Period report, "Lower-income students and students of color (particularly Latinx students) are more impacted by lack of access than white and middle-income students. Nearly half of Latinx students (46%) say returning to school made it easier for them to access period products, and 23% say they have had to choose between buying period products and food/clothing⁸." Furthermore, "almost half of Black and Latinx students feel they are not able to do their best schoolwork because of lack of access to period products, compared to 28% among white students⁹." The inability to purchase sufficient commercial period products often leads menstruators to wear the products they do have for extended periods of time, putting them at risk of reproductive tract infections (RTIs)¹⁰, or, alternatively, to use materials such as toilet paper, rags, or newspaper as absorbents.

Compounding issues of access, menstrual products are not covered by federal assistance programs including the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children [WIC] and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program [SNAP]¹¹. SNAP and WIC do not classify menstrual products as "items of necessity,"¹² and ten states continue to tax them¹³ thus making it that much more difficult for low-income menstruators to secure the products they need.

Further exacerbating this issue for low-income menstruators is the fact that menstrual products are donated to food pantries and social service organizations at much lower rates than other health and hygiene products. The Free Period Pantry is an organization working to address this by building little free libraries of period products around the world. PridePads Africa will be sponsoring a Free Period Pantry in Boulder starting this fall—stay tuned for the location and ways you can support.

As of 2022, Colorado is among the 40 states (plus Washington D.C.) that do not tax period products. In 2024, the Colorado General Assembly passed HB24-1164, which mandates that public schools must provide free menstrual products in student bathrooms and appropriated $100,000 to the Department of Education for the Menstrual Hygiene Products Accessibility Grant Program. While these are steps in the right direction, there is still significant progress to be made to eradicate period poverty in Colorado.

How to Help

Each of us has a role to play in the fight to end period poverty and there are many ways you can be part of the change:

• Start the conversation: Let’s normalize talking about periods through open, honest conversations that help shatter the stigma of menstrual hygiene and foster understanding.

• Advocate for progress: Speak up! Now is the time to reach out to your local leaders and policy makers. Ask them to support free period products in schools, remove taxation on menstrual supplies, and work to ensure comprehensive menstrual health information for all. You can check your state’s progress on the Alliance for Period Supplies’ website under their State Period Poverty Fact Sheets section.

• Support the Movement: There’s no one “right way” to help - you can donate, share our mission on social media, or attend an event (see below). Your involvement helps build a more period-friendly world.

While our interventions are in Cameroon, PridePads Africa works to foster positive social conversations and norms surrounding menstruation within our local community here in Colorado. To join the conversation, join us for our fifth annual Une Nuit Pour Les Filles: A Benefit for PridePads Africa on Sunday, November 2, 2025 at Rembrandt Yard in Boulder. All funds raised will benefit PridePads Africa and will allow us to continue our mission of promoting menstrual health and hygiene education and providing biodegradable menstrual pads to girls and women in Cameroon. This event will also launch our 2025 end-of-year campaign, Period Power: Supporting Girls’ Education with Sustainable Menstruation. We would love to have you join us!

If you are unable to attend but would like to learn more about PridePads work or donate, please visit our website.

Together, we will ensure that menstruation is never a barrier to education or employment.

Elizabeth Cleveland Biography

Having first joined PridePads Africa in 2021 as a volunteer, Elizabeth is honored to have served on the Board of Directors prior to becoming Executive Director in January 2023. Elizabeth received an MA in Gender Studies and Law from SOAS-University of London, having written her dissertation entitled Menstruation and Period Poverty: Undervalued and Overlooked Aspects of the Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR) Arena, which was inspired by her work with PridePads. Prior to SOAS, she studied International and Comparative Politics and International Human Rights Law at The American University of Paris, where she discovered and fostered her passion for women’s rights and empowerment in development projects. Her focus, both in academia and the professional world, has been on community-based development projects that advance human rights and gender equity. In addition to her work as Executive Director of PridePads, Elizabeth works in the international development and non-profit sectors in Washington, D.C.

¹ Thinx, Inc. and PERIOD. Global Glossary for the Menstrual Movement, January 2022. https://period.org/uploads/Global-Glossary-for-the-Menstrual-Movement-v1.3.pdf.

² Ribault, Maya. "Overcoming the Taboo: Advancing the Global Agenda for Menstrual Hygiene Management for Schoolgirls." GOING PUBLIC 103, no. 9 (2013): 4. P. 1558

³ World Bank. "Cameroon Overview." World Bank, 2022. https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/cameroon/overview.

⁴ Thinx, Inc. and PERIOD. Global Glossary for the Menstrual Movement, January 2022.

⁵ Brinkley, Jennifer, and Nicole Niebuhr. "Period Poverty and Life Strains: Efforts Made to Erase Stigma and to Expand Access to Menstrual Hygiene Products." SSRN Electronic Journal, 2022. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4042285. P.3.

⁶ Brinkley, Jennifer, and Nicole Niebuhr. "Period Poverty and Life Strains." P. 3

⁷ Brinkley, Jennifer, and Nicole Niebuhr. "Period Poverty and Life Strains." P. 3

⁸ PERIOD., and Thinx. "State of the Period 2021."

⁹ PERIOD., and Thinx. "State of the Period 2021."

¹⁰ Sumpter, Colin, and Belen Torondel. "A Systematic Review of the Health and Social Effects of Menstrual Hygiene Management." Edited by Hamid Reza Baradaran. PLoS ONE 8, no. 4 (April 26, 2013): e62004. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0062004. P. 2

¹¹ Fouled, Flora. "State Actions to Increase Access to Menstrual Products." NCSL, February 13, 2023. https://www.ncsl.org/health/state-actions-to-increase-access-to-menstrual-products.

¹² Brinkley, Jennifer, and Nicole Niebuhr."Period Poverty and Life Strains." P. 3

¹³ "Tampon Tax - Alliance for Period Supplies." Alliance for Period Supplies - It's that time.*, July 11, 2025. https://allianceforperiodsupplies.org/tampon-tax\.