Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s latest book, A Path Appears, features SHE. In this book, they feature “innovators who are using research, evidence-based strategies, and brilliant ideas of their own to prevent violence, improve health, boost education, and spread opportunity at home and around the world,” and concludes “social entrepreneurship” and for-profit organizations as the most promising models for change. Among these social entrepreneurs featured is SHE’s Founder and Chief Instigating Officer Elizabeth Scharpf!
We’re grateful for a spotlight on our work and most importantly, on the too-long overlooked issue of lack of access to menstrual health education and affordable products such as our SHE go! pads.
You can join the SHE movement today. Become a SHE Trailblazer and invest today.
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For more information, contact:
Connie Lewin
Director of Strategic Partnerships & Marketing
supportshe@sheinnovates.com
SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises) LaunchPads for Change Profiled in Pulitzer Prize Winners Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s latest book.
SHE founder Elizabeth Scharpf is profiled in Pulitzer Prize winning authors Nicholas Kristof’s and Sheryl WuDunn’s latest book; A Path Appears, a study on innovators and social change.
New York, NY – September 2014 – A Path Appears, written by Pulitzer Prize winner Nicholas Kristof, and Sheryl WuDunn includes a profile of SHE’s Founder and Chief Instigating Officer Elizabeth Scharpf, (Notre Dame, Fulbright Fellowship, Harvard MBA/MPID), on her journey from Harvard Business School to rural Rwanda in pursuit of a solution to a pressing social problem:
18% of women and girls in Rwanda SHE surveyed were regularly missing out on work or school because they could not afford to buy menstrual pads.
Quite apart from the personal injustice, and the larger issues of health and dignity, Scharpf calculated the potential GDP loss at $215 per women per year – a total of $115,000,000 in Rwanda alone.
Determined to pursue an innovation, not aid approach, Scharpf, through her organization SHE, Sustainable Health Enterprises, developed and patented a method to transform banana trunk fiber (typically thrown out) into 5-cent menstrual pads. These pads could be sold cheaply to women, and to schools who could give them to girls who need them.
500 pads a day.
3,000 girls a month.
A Path Appears weighs up the merits of the innovation, not aid approach, and finds it to be highly successful: “innovators who are using research, evidence-based strategies, and brilliant ideas of their own to prevent violence, improve health, boost education, and spread opportunity at home and around the world.”
The book concludes that “social entrepreneurship” and for-profit organizations are the most promising models for change.
“I believe what sets SHE apart, and merits being featured in A Path Appears, is our approach to disrupting traditional aid models,” said Scharpf. “Strange as it may seem, my goal is to be driven out of a job by actually solving problems by applying good business ideas and practices to global issues.”
“As a social venture, SHE is determined to seek out other solutions to unsexy or overlooked problems that can have a huge impact on people’s everyday lives. There’s a profound lack of toilets in the world. And transportation is a problem: developing countries make up 50% of the world’s traffic, but have 90% of its traffic fatalities.”
To learn more about Elizabeth Scharpf, SHE and SHE28, please go to www.sheinnovates.com.
To learn more about A Path Appears, go to: A Path Appears
Today, we are launching our updated brand on our redesigned website! This new brand identity is more than a design makeover; it reflects who we are today, and where we’re going.
Six years after launching SHE, we’ve learned is that it takes tenacity to disrupt the status quo and create change.
Debunking stereotypes
Reclaiming local resources
Investing in new ideas and people
Launching entrepreneurs to improve lives
Our four words, along with our mission statement, are a living and accurate reflection of who we are and how we work today.
2014 will be a major year for SHE as we move forward with our industrial-scale pilot to produce pads for 3,000 schoolgirls attending our ten partners schools and youth centers in the Kayonza district of Rwanda. As SHE continues to evolve, we will look to our brand to stay true to our approach.
Finally, we’ve changed our identity to mark this new chapter. We worked with Blok Design to create a brand identity that needed to capture the heart and soul of a brand that strengthens women and girls to stand tall and proud. Therefore the wordmark “stands tall,” emphasized by the bold underscore and color palette.
Our photos were also taken by two superb photographers and friends of SHE:
- Finnish photographer Perttu Saralampi, whose photos are featured in the carousel on our homepage as well as throughout the site. Check out more of his work here: http://perttusaralampi.tumblr.com/
- New Zealander Tash McCarroll who spent a lot of time with our staff at our Ngoma production site to capture our progress. View more of her work here: http://tashmccarroll.com/
Please explore our redesigned website, and if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.
Ain’t no stopping us now – SHE’s on the move!
Elizabeth and the SHE Team
The 2013 Grinnell Prize—a $100,000 award presented to young innovators in social justice – has been awarded to Chief Instigating Officer Elizabeth Scharpf and COO, Rwanda, Julian Kayibanda! If any of you are in Iowa next week from November 3 – 9, you will have a chance to meet Elizabeth and Julian during the week-long Grinnell Prize Symposium!
The Grinnell College Young Innovator for Social Justice Prize (also known as the Grinnell Prize) honors individuals under the age of 40 who have demonstrated leadership in their fields and who show creativity, commitment and extraordinary accomplishment in effecting positive social change. Each prize carries an award of $100,000, half to each winning individual (or individuals) and half to an organization committed to the winner’s area of social justice. For more information, including information go to www.grinnell.edu/grinnellprize.
Read the press release here: http://prn.to/19N6cQs
Watch our Grinnell Prize Award video here:
What do you think? Let us know – tweet her @Scharpfie or us @SHEnterprises.