Blog

From Saxapahaw to Buckingham Palace

in Blog  by connie lewin

Health and Hygiene Manager Nadia Hitimana has gone to both coasts of the Atlantic Ocean to break the silence and build awareness of our sustainable approach to get girls and women the affordable pads they need to stay at school/work:

Nadia Hitimana presented SHE's innovation at 2015 SwitchPoint Conference SwitchPoint is a world-renowned conference hosted by Intrahealth International that takes place in Saxapahaw, North Carolina focusing on innovations that can improve the world. I was invited to present on the work I do with SHE. Additionally, I touched upon the Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) program, an initiative formed by President Obama to convene future leaders from all over sub-Saharan Africa, and which I participated in last summer as part of the inaugural class of leaders. Various different professionals attended SwitchPoint, namely health experts, entrepreneurs, and technologists, among so many others.

My speech was centered on how our health education program works in alignment with our business development. Currently we are working to increase MHM knowledge and skills among students with initial training of teachers. The audience was so captivated by the manufacturing of the pads. They asked questions relating to the functionality of the product, its cost effectiveness, and the challenges and opportunities we have faced as we try to scale. Additionally, they were curious about how SHE engages with girls and their communities. We further pondered possibilities as to whether our model can also work to meet women’s health needs, including those who suffer with obstetric fistula.

From our brainstorm about fistulas, I have learned how much poor MHM practices can not only lead to missing school or incomplete education, additionally, it can be a contributing factor that increases the risks of obstetric fistula. This conference has highlighted my ever existing conviction that proper MHM is a key to preventing many of the reproductive health complications women are likely to face while growing up.

Queen’s Young Leaders

Nadia Hitimana received the inaugural Queen's Young Leaders Award from H.R.H. Queen Elizabeth.

Nadia Hitimana received the inaugural Queen’s Young Leaders Award from Queen Elizabeth.

I then landed on the other side of the Atlantic Coast as one of the Queen’s Young Leaders, another youth leadership program based in the United Kingdom. The selection was based on my previous work achievements with refugees and my responsibilities in MHM education and advocacy at SHE.

As part of the program, I traveled to England for a week to meet other Queen’s Young Leaders, and Queen Elizabeth herself! I have learned so much from various young leaders doing extraordinary things and impacting their communities in ways that are so diverse but converge on the same goal: “leaving the world as a better place than we found it.”

I was inspired to involve community members and girls/women to participate in the development of our products and services, especially within my engagement with SHE. Empowering communities to participate in solving their own problems and take the lead in suggesting innovative solutions can contribute to the sustainable development of Rwanda.

Why I Give to SHE: Meet Molly Johnson

in Blog  by connie lewin

Molly Johnson_Donor and Volunteer_July 2015How did you first get involved with SHE?

I heard about SHE through the School of Visual Arts, where I was tasked with a logo design assignment for them.

What is unique about SHE?

SHE is unique because it is a sustainable, long-term solution. The go! pads help communities in reciprocal ways by empowering women and creating jobs.

What impact have you seen from your donation and volunteer work?

I have seen my designs featured on the website and social media including the 2014 holiday campaign.

Return on investment when you give to SHE

An example of Molly’s work for SHE’s 2014 Holiday Campaign.

What makes you excited about SHE’s future direction?

I am excited to see SHE really thrive in Rwanda, so that similar initiatives are carried out in other communities around the world.

What would you say to someone thinking about becoming a donor or volunteer to SHE? I would say that women can miss up to 50 days of work/school a year if they don’t have sanitary products. 

To discover more of Molly’s talents, check out her portfolio at mollymasonjohnson.com 

If you want to use your talents for purpose to help further our mission, email us at supportshe@sheinnovates.com.

Scaling Mountains to Solve An Overlooked Issue

in Blog  by connie lewin
Eva Johnston Kilimanjaro Climb with go pads July 2015 .jpg

#climbforSHE team member Eva Johnston on Mt. Kilimanjaro with a pack of go! pads.

Our #climbforSHE team is back from scaling Mt. Kilimanjaro and raised $51,615 dollars! Read about her life-changing experience:

Eva, one of our esteemed SHE climbers recounts her experience climbing Mount Kilimanjaro:

My attempt to sum our trip up…magical to the point of being miraculous! SENE was an incredible expedition company, our SHE climbing team consisted of rock star climbers and every single woman on the trip was and continues to be an inspiration to me!  Our circumstances couldn’t have worked out any better. The weather was as close to perfect as one could hope for. Additionally, noting that our ages ranged from 17 to 71, some with zero climbing or camping skills (me and my daughter included), others with zero training we ALL reached the summit safely and with smiles on our faces! I feel so lucky and blessed to have been a part of this group of women.

To Bella—our brilliant, compassionate, motivated climb leader and the other equally inspiring young climbers, Mia, Beatrice and Chloë, you all give me such hope for the future and I want to thank you for being such positive role models for my daughter while we climbed the mountain. To Sara, Joanne, Connie and Gayle—I was truly lucky to be up there breathing the same air as you ladies!  I am in awe of your strength, motivation, and passion for SHE, for helping other women across our planet and your commitment to leaving this planet better than we found it.

As anticipated, I am feeling a post-climb, post-adrenaline rush sadness acknowledging that this amazing experience has come to an end. I’m certain I will be dreaming of the pure, cold air I was breathing on Mount Kilimanjaro, the stars that looked like I could reach out and touch, the sound of our awesome guides waking us up to check vitals each morning and the hot cup of coffee I knew was on its way from our always smiling team of SENE porters and the views from my tent every morning. As amazing as pictures are, they simply cannot capture the magic of the moment that is experienced and taken in by the human eye!

Celebrating Menstrual Hygiene Day

in Blog  by connie lewin

 

SHE celebrated the second annual Menstrual Hygiene Day, founded by WASH United, nationwide in Rwanda. An estimated 2.5 million people were buzzing with new menstrual health information during our live Q&A on Radio Rwanda. We also led local celebrations with 703 boys and girls from The Akilah Institute for Women, Riviera School, and the Rukara sector. They celebrated Menstrual Hygiene Day with skits, awareness sessions, and a soccer match!

And the world is taking notice of Menstrual Hygiene Day too! Forbes and Ashoka named us 1 of 5 Amazing Companies in Menstrual Hygiene. NPR acknowledged our pioneering approach of using business solutions to keep girls in school and women working.

Our friends at The Akilah Institute of Women gave some encouraging messages to the younger girls of Rwanda:

 

Moms Know Best

in Blog  by connie lewin

This year, we celebrated Mother’s Day at our Ngoma production site by inviting our team’s children to tour the facility and enjoy in some special treats. We asked their children what they most appreciate about their mothers, and their responses (and photos) are too charming not to share!

Barbara, age 4

Barbara, age 4

“I like my mother because she buys me puppets and a bicycle.”

Igor, age 8

Igor, age 8

“I am proud of my foster mother (Aunty) because she continuously helps me to improve my class scores and because of her efforts this term I was ranked the third of my class.”

Bella, age 6

Bella, age 6

"I am proud of my mother and my family because they respect me."

Our mothers had their turn too to share what is most meaningful to them about working at SHE.

Nadine and her daughter Barbara, age 4

Nadine and her daughter Barbara, age 4

"I am inspired to go to work everyday because I am producing something helpful for girls and women."

Marie Louise Umulisa with her children

Marie Louise Umulisa with her children

" I didn’t feel comfortable to talk about menstruation and pads, but now that I produce them I feel comfortable and confident to talk about both menstruation and using pads."

Sandrine and her children

Sandrine and her children

"The most meaningful part of my work is that I proudly use the product that I have produced myself!"

Thanks to our working moms are doing to make a lasting impact for their children and for their communities! Happy Mother’s Day!

We’re Hiring! Join the SHE Team as our Executive Director

in Blog  by Elizabeth Scharpf

About Sustainable Health Enterprises:

Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), an award-winning social venture recognized by Harvard Business School, Bill Clinton, and most recently featured by Pulitzer Prize New York Times writer Nick Kristof in his new book, is looking for an Executive Director. We’ve come a long way in a short time and now we’re at an exciting growth point and looking for a dynamic Executive Director (a newly created position) to help lead the way!

SHE is an innovative social venture that invests in people and ideas that are typically overlooked (and often taboo) as vehicles of socio-economic change. SHE’s first initiative, SHE28, addresses girls’ and women’s lack of access to affordable menstrual pads resulting in significant costs to their reproductive health, educational achievements, work productivity, and dignity.  SHE is stemming these costs by developing a franchise model to manufacture and distribute affordable, eco-friendly menstrual pads for girls and women by sourcing local, inexpensive raw materials (e.g., banana fibers) and leveraging existing networks.  Coupling these new businesses with public health and hygiene education and advocacy will have a significant social and economic impact on these communities.

Job Description: Executive Director

The Executive Director will oversee all aspects of SHE, including:

Strategy

  1. Review existing 5 year scale strategy and alter (if need be based on current milestones and environment);
  2. Determine steps to execute (operational, human resource, financial requirements)
  3. Get Board/team buy in
  4. Execute on 5 year plan with measurable progress against quarterly and annual targets

Capital raising

  1. Determine capital needs based on updated strategy
  2. Ultimately responsible for raising funds by utilizing existing partnerships and developing new ones (individual, institutional, Board)
    • Individual-driven: catalyzing major gifts (50K+ range)
    • Institutional: catalyzing $100K+ large multi-year gifts
    • Board: facilitate significant board involvement in raising capital
    • Request for proposals: oversee grant proposal writing and reporting in the 100K+ range
  3. Oversee all stewardship of all major capital coming in through in-person meetings and/or reports
  4. Ensure SHE Rwanda is meeting sales targets; work with CEO and Board on other diversified earned income streams

Management (Operations, Finance, Organizational Development, Human Resources)

  1. Ensure Rwandan operations are fulfilling investor milestones
  2. Oversee sharing of best practices globally based on 5 year strategy
  3. Work with vendors to follow all financial reporting required by investors as well as US government (including 990 and CHAR filings, audit)
  4. Work with vendors and COO Global and Head of Operations Rwanda to make sure all policies and processes are in place for smooth operations
  5. Make recommendations on hiring decisions in US and confer with Heads of Operations Rwanda on HR decisions in Rwanda

Board Relations

  1. Prepare materials for quarterly Board meetings, updating board on operations, strategy, etc
  2. Work with Board Chair to recruit potential new Board members and/or advisors who would accelerate our progress

Leadership

  1. Lead with integrity, passion, and determination and inspire the staff and international community
  2. Advocate for SHE externally. The Executive Director would represent SHE and/or tap certain staff to represent SHE in national and/or international meetings, communicating our mission to increase our reach and impact.

Qualifications

We are looking for outstanding candidates who fit the following criteria:

  • Track record: At least five years of senior management experience in a growing, global organization preferred
  • Business savvy: Have been responsible for a P&L (preferably $1M+) and built and managed teams that successfully executed on a strategic plan for impact and scale.
  • Must be experienced in building financial models that will drive key parts of the strategy.
  • Capital raising: Proven track record of raising venture philanthropic capital (via individuals, institutions—large foundations, corporations, etc) and/or creative new structures
  • Extensive network, including relationships with potential large funders and/or strategic partners
  • Exceptional communications skills
  • Can-do positive attitude (we did figure out how to make sanitary pads out of banana trees—not easy!) and initiative
  • Bachelor degree required, advanced degree preferred
  • Strong background in international economic development and/or social entrepreneurship preferred, but open to highly-skilled unique leaders
  • Language: English required. French is a plus

Job Location: Preferably NYC with up to 50% travel, nationally and internationally

Duration
 minimum: 2+ years commitment, full-time job.

Preferred Start Date:
 June 2015

Compensation: Competitive with performance-driven bonuses and raises

To Apply:

Please send cover letter and CV to hresources@SHEinnovates.com as late as May 5, 2015 (this is rolling though, so the earlier the better) and let us know why you would be the best person for the job today!

 

Sarah Boeckmann, our M&E consultant (second from left) learns more about the menstrual hygiene management challenges for girls from the headmistress at the GS Giyaka school.

By the Numbers: Our M&E Strategy

in Blog  by connie lewin

Guest post by Sarah Boeckmann, our M&E Consultant

I have been SHE’s Monitoring and Evaluation consultant for about 2 years. That means I have helped the team develop a logical framework for SHE’s education and advocacy work. I also developed tools to help them collect data that, in the long term, will help SHE understand the impact of its work on women and girls in Rwanda. Recently I had the chance to go to Rwanda to work with the team there to test some data collection tools that are being used to collect data from girls in 10 rural, primary schools.

SHE is at a very exciting moment right now because menstrual hygiene management (MHM) clubs are starting this term in 10 schools in Kayonza. The clubs are run by teachers trained by Nadia Hitmana, SHE’s Health and Hygiene Manager, to teach an MHM curriculum to students. Now that these clubs are about to kick off, and pads will be reaching these same schools, it is important for SHE to collect baseline data on the students in these clubs to understand the effect the training has on them.

SHE is interested both in how the training affects their knowledge of menstruation and healthy menstrual hygiene practices, but also if and how the training affects their behavior around menstruation. This includes everything from their use and disposal of pads, to how confident they feel during their period, to how often they are absent from school because of their period.

Data like this is tricky and complex to gather accurately and a good way to try to get the best data possible is to use a combination of quantitative (like surveys) and qualitative (like focus groups) data collection tools. It is hard to get these tools right without testing them in the setting where they are meant to be used.

While I was in Rwanda we spent a day in one of the schools testing the various tools with a classroom of girls who volunteered.  These are the kinds of things that we were looking for:

  • Were their questions that the girls didn’t understand?
  • Were we missing any possible answer choices on multiple choice questions?
  • How long did it take to complete a survey?

We also asked the students what they thought of the tools and how they were administered. Sometimes asking those kinds of open-ended questions point out problems you never would have considered.

Testing the tools in a real life setting always makes glaringly obvious issues you never would have considered. You might find out the tool you thought would take 30 minutes takes 2 hours, or that a question you thought was great makes absolutely no sense.

As for us, we had decided that to test the students’ knowledge of menstruation and MHM we would have them close their eyes and raise their hands yes or no/true or false in respond to a question. We thought this would solve the problem of having students of different ages and literacy levels taking one test. We also wanted to make the data collection process more fun for the students and not start the club off with formal test that might make the club seem boring or scary. What we hadn’t considered was that there would be so many kids in a small classroom that they could barely raise a hand and could definitely feel what the kids on either side of them were doing.

While piloting data collection tools highlight problems, it also makes solutions obvious as well. The teacher who was with us pointed out that afterschool clubs are often held outside and that if the students were outside they could be more spread out, solving the problem. Piloting the tools and seeing what issues arise helped us to make the changes needed to finalize the tools.

Nadia and Flora are collecting lots of great baseline data from more than 200 girls right now before they receive pads or start learning about MHM. Then we will collect data from a similar number of girls after they spend a term learning about MHM from SHE-Trained Teachers and see what changes or doesn’t change and why.

It is especially important for SHE to get this kind of rich, detailed information from the girls in these 10 schools so that the team can learn and make changes based on lessons learned as it scales-up to providing pads and teacher training throughout Rwanda.

NYU Women’s Soccer Embarks on a “Padded” Project with SHE

in Blog  by connie lewin

Guest post by Sophie Frank, a freshman at New York University and goalkeeper on the Varsity Soccer Team

When you are on a team with thirty other females, there is no way to evade the topic of PERIODS. Menstrual cycles fall in and hormones are rampant. It was not until NYU Women’s Soccer worked with Sustainable Health Enterprises, however, that we were exposed to a new perspective on the dreaded topic of menstruation. We gathered in the conference room at Coles Sports Center on campus and listened to SHE founder, Elizabeth Scharpf and SHE strategy director, Connie Lewin, explain the gaping need for women in Rwanda to have better access to and education about menstruation and menstruation resources. Elizabeth and Connie inspired us with their description of the sustainable business SHE has innovated: creating jobs, opening doors, and providing necessary health resources to passionate and intelligent women in Rwanda. We knew we had to do more.

As busy college students, we wanted to make sure that we were able to do something meaningful, and would serve SHE directly. We went to the drawing board, and in doing so, we learned a lot about how we can wield our common femininity to both empathize with and be empowered by the female population that SHE28 targets. After doing research and learning more about SHE28, we identified that we would make the biggest difference by raising awareness and fundraising. Putting our creative energies to work, we baked tasty treats and colored eye catching posters. We then hosted a bake sale at the same sports center where we were first inspired by the SHE28 mission. Although we did not raise enough to propel SHE28 into a future of easy investing, we brought this topic–of women who lack proper materials for menstruation–to the attention of our peers. Cookies for a cause. NYU women’s soccer is grateful to have had the opportunity to learn more about such a great entrepreneurial pursuit and important cause. We hope to have made a difference with our team’s #smallthing and we hope to do more work with SHE28 in the future.

 

Meet the SHE Team: Yvonne Krywyj

in Blog  by connie lewin

Hometown: Detroit

What is your role and what are some of your current projects?  I am the head of business operations for Rwanda, so I oversee everything that goes on here. Right now, I’m working on updating our team’s strategic plans and working to get our pads approved by the Rwanda Bureau of Standards, as well as engaging partners for future collaborations. 

What might (someone) be surprised to know about you? I can come up with haikus on command, about any topic. For example, here’s one for SHE:

This one’s for the girls: 

Period’s no cause for shame. 

Let’s break the taboo.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Or your favorite snack?

I’m not a big dessert person, but I can’t resist Ben & Jerry’s Triple Caramel Chunk, which I think has a new name now. My favorite snack, though, is wasabi peas. Or wasabi peanuts. Or really anything coated in wasabi.

What was the last song you just listened to?

Embrace, by Goldroom

Why did you join SHE?

I joined SHE because it offers a market-based approach to a social problem, because it creates jobs and increases income for women all along the value chain, because it benefits women and girls, and because I couldn’t ask for a better team of people to work with.

What do you wish other people knew about SHE?

I wish other people knew that SHE is not a traditional charity but, rather, is investing in people and growing the economy here in Rwanda while breaking the taboos around menstruation and making it easier for women and girls to go about their normal daily lives while on their periods. In the long-term, operating as a business is a much more sustainable approach than relying on donations forever.

Flora leading teachers training session Nov 2014

Meet the SHE Team: Flora Ufitinema

in Blog  by connie lewin

What is your role and what are some of your current projects?

As the Marketing and Research Associate, I serve as the brand advocate of go!, and work closely with the team to increase brand awareness, drive sales, and ultimately generate new business leads. I also provide research and analysis support to our health education and awareness program.

What might someone be surprised to know about you?

People don’t believe that I can tell good jokes, but I always surprise them when I speak out and make people laugh. I seem more as an introvert, but in reality, I am both an introvert and extrovert.

What is your favorite flavor of ice cream? Or your favorite snack?

Chocolate Ice Cream

What was the last song you just listened to?

“Create In Me A Clean Heart” by Donnie McClurkin

Why did you join SHE?

I joined SHE so I can be part of a team that inspires confidence in girls everyday of the month, and provides sustainable solutions to Rwandan young girls using our country’s resources.

What do you wish other people knew about SHE?

People should know that SHE enables girls to find freedom and dignity, promotes a positive outlook on menstruation and boosts girls’ confidence during a period of insecurity.