Drive to help poor learners results in major donation

Ten years ago, Nontokozo Buthelezi started buying sanitary pads for her learners. Although she earns very little as a teacher, she says she had no choice.

“My learners come from very poor families. They have to worry about what they will eat that night — pads are the last concern for them and their families,” she explains.

Buthelezi teaches at Enhlube Combined School in Nomponjwana, a village about 50km away from Empangeni in KwaZulu-Natal. The pads she buys each month helps keep some of her learners in class when they are menstruating.

“I usually just have two packets in my cupboard. It’s all I can afford. But they run out quickly,” she told Mail & Guardian’s health journalism centre, Bhekisisa, in February. “So many of them need the pads.” No research has been done to determine how many learners in South Africa miss school because of menstruation, but a study published in 2014 in the United Statesbased Journal of International Development found that 95% of learners from rural villages in Ghana reported that they had been forced to skip classes during their period.

The same was true for about 20% of pupils in peri-urban communities.

These harrowing statistics encouraged Nhlanhla Mthembu to make a difference. Mthembu co-ordinates one of the professional committees at the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA).

“I was looking for a company that sells reusable pads. I searched the internet and found a Bhekisisa article,” explains Mthembu, who was fundraising at the time to provide sanitary pads for poor learners in the Eastern Cape.

But reading Buthelezi’s story through Bhekisisa made her realise she just couldn’t stop there.

“My mother is a teacher and I know teachers don’t earn much. So, what she was doing could not have been easy for her,” said Mthembu.

Last week, she and the HPCSA donated sanitary pads worth almost R9000 to Buthelezi’s school. This amount sponsors enough pads for every menstruating learner for most of the year.

Mthembu hopes this donation is the first of many of its kind.

“The HPCSA prides itself on having the public’s best interests at heart, and we should show this by improving the lives of those we claim to look out for,” she says.

She makes the point that journalism plays a vital role in bringing issues to light — and connecting communities: “Journalism creates awareness, it connects people. It is through newspapers that we get to know about women like Nontokozo.”

Buthelezi has also received donations from other Mail & Guardian readers following the story.

“These pads will give my learners a better life,” she says.

“That is all that matters.”