NGO donates sanitary towels to learners

By: Obedience Mkhabela

Impact Innovation is a non-profit organisation established early this year that donated sanitary towels to all grade 7 learners of Reagile primary school. The organisation is looking to take care of young people’s mental well-being and personal hygiene, more especially in impoverished communities. They intended to operate throughout the local communities changing the lives of young people through educating them about personal hygiene, personal health, mental well-being, and introducing them to the basics of ICT.

Co-founder of the organisation Karabo Makgamatho said the project came about realizing how most of the learners are still struggling to go about life on a daily basis.
“We discovered that the majority rate of school dropouts is because of the bad background. So we took it to our self to help them through the journey to the future,” said Makgamatho.

“We initially took money from our pockets and collected the sanitary towels from our close family, friends, and social media people who saw our Facebook post and responded to the request by donating 5 packs to each person.

“Poverty affects millions of schools going children in South Africa; this is a known factor that has remained unchanged to this date.“Failure to attend to this problem will affect the next generation. It is embarrassing and shameful to acknowledge that there are still schoolgirls who miss up to 25 school days a year because they cannot afford sanitary towels,” adds Makgamatho.

“We aim to eradicate this socio-economic problem by providing primary essentials to school children who are affected. We will be donating sanitary towels in Ga-Rankuwa Pretoria before the end of December, the date and exact location will be announced on our Facebook page.

“The project was our first project as an organization and we are planning to host different campaigns that will also include boys after every two months. The other founders of the organization are Phenyo Matlonya and Dr. Kgomotso Elvis Morinda. Future projects will be food parcels, clothing donations, toiletries, and free Basic Computer Literature sessions,” said Makgamatho.