Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Keeping girls in the classroom
Initiative gets teens to classes during menstruation, fights stigma by addressing boys, writes KEVIN RITCHIE
LYNETTE Saltzman is on a mission. She wants to live in a country where no girl misses school because it’s that time of the month and the prospect of humiliation and shame outweighs any chance of getting a decent education.
She’s on a mission to get South Africans to care, but in caring break the stigma that menstruation still carries in many parts of the country – across class, colour and creed.
Salzman knows all about the stigma. As a young pharmacist, she remembers dispensing sanitary towels that were wrapped in brown paper, so great was the taboo.
Today she laughs bitterly at the memory; “that’s the kind of embarrassment there was. Million Comforts is a bid to get the country talking, to help men and boys understand what is happening with the women in their lives.
“I hope it goes a long way to take away the objectification of women in society and builds respect about the role of these people who could ultimately become the mothers of the next generation.”
Saltzman is the chief executive officer of Dis-Chem, the nationwide discount pharmacy chain she started with her husband Ivan in Mondeor in 1978.
“When we started our business and saw it was starting to become successful, we had to give something back,” she explains. The DisChem Foundation, with its tagline “Pharmacists who care” was built on the premise of taking part of the profits and dividing it between rewards for the customers and building the foundation’s fund to be able to invest in local charities.
The foundation focuses on humans and animals, on the environment, on hygiene.
One of the biggest projects is the food garden concepts, with one of the largest at the company’s Midrand head office feeding 28 separate groups. Many others have been established in township and rural schools across the country to ensure that schoolchildren get the necessary vitamins every day they might not otherwise be able to. Some schools are even able to sell the surplus to the community and raise funds for other projects.
Children remain a key focus for the foundation. Feeding them, making sure they have blankets in winter, supporting orphanages and shelters for abandoned babies, reaching out to children forced to scavenge on mine dumps.
When Richard Mabaso, the founder of Caring4Girls, approached the foundation with his dream of addressing the critical lack of sanitary towels for poverty-stricken girls three years ago, Saltzman leapt at the opportunity.
“I don’t believe that success is of our own doing, the more that one gives, the more you’ll be able to give,” she says. “What we do isn’t much, but it touches others.”
Saltzman’s being modest. In the first year of the project, the aim was to get a million sanitary towels donated. By the time the campaign was finished, 1.6 million had been handed in at specially-branded bins in the company’s 106 stores. Last year’s edition of Million Comforts was set a target of 2 million – and eclipsed that, amassing 6.5 million sanitary towels.
Saltzman believes the success of the campaign has been built on three pillars: the essential need for such a campaign; the simplicity of it, buying in store, paying for the towel and then dropping it in the bin; and the enthusiasm of the Dis-Chem staff.
“When Richard first came to me with this concept, I was unaware of the problem. I thought women just got by without using disposable sanitary towels. In our stores though we have people – on the tills and working as merchandisers – who either grew up without access to disposable sanitary towels or knew women who had to make do. It is these people in the front line who have been encouraging our customers to take part in this initiative.
“We’ve had some customers buying packs just to donate.”
The initiative has been helped by sanitary towel manufacturers pledging to donate on a one-for-one basis for every one of their products bought, while Dis-Chem has provided its own house brand sanitary towel and kept the price under R10.
Every single sanitary towel is audited and tracked. When they are distributed, they are handed over to the individual girls after a briefing session on menstruation and feminine hygiene to the girls – and the boys have to attend a lecture too.
Last year, 146 000 girls did not miss a single day’s schooling because of the Million Comforts campaign. Studies show that teenage girls living in poverty can lose up to a fifth of their high school careers because of menstruation. It’s an abomination for Saltzman.
“Education is key. When I was growing up, in a poor household, education was nonnegotiable. Girls must finish their schooling, they must get to matric, they must become skilled because only then will they break the cycle of poverty and abuse.
“Girls have to become independent, they have to keep their dignity intact, not just because they are human beings but because they are our future mothers.
“This project is important because it doesn’t only give them a chance to do just that, it breaks down stigma in the process. Boys need to be educated too.”
No target has been set for this year’s drive, which runs from June 16 in all the DisChem stores.
“We merely appeal to the incredible generosity of the South African public, imbued by our mutual and unique spirit of ubuntu to help us make a difference in the lives of some of the most vulnerable members of our community,” she said.
“We are confident that South Africans will respond as they consistently have and continue to do.”