Project Submission Form

May, 2019

KAPANDE FOUNDATION

Improve Sanitary Health for Women and Girls

Project Proposal

Project Title: Improve Sanitary Health for Women and Girls.

Region: Sub Saharan Africa
Sector: Health and Education Sector
Country: South Africa
Estimated start date: 01/07/2019
Estimated end date: 20/12/2019
Executing Agency: KAPANDE FOUNDATION
Sector: Sanitary Health
Sub-sectors: Capacity-building, Literacy program drug control,
environment, gender, HIV/AIDS, human rights,

Estimated budget Year One: ZAR 72 000

Total: ZAR 72 000 (USD 5 000)

OVERVIEW

Since attaining independence from the Apartheid regime, South Africa`s majority of township
and rural communities are still struggling to access proper health care and education. The gap
between rich and poor has its roots in cultural, ethnic and religious communities underpinned by
sovereignty, political and economic issues. In the post-apartheid South Africa of today,
unemployment figures have skyrocketed particularly amongst the unskilled and less skilled
populace. A lack of health awareness programs, education and skills training still remains as one
of the greatest challenges facing South Africa.

The available empirical evidence clearly suggests that South Africa faces a situation of
widespread lack of resources to fund procurement of basic sanitary hygiene kits for the less
fortunate. The highest number of poor families are either illiterate or unskilled and unemployed,
especially in the rural areas, among women, men and marginalized groups. The illiteracy rate is
estimated to be above 90 percent or even more, one of the highest in Africa. It has been found
that there is a latent demand for education among the poor, especially women and girls, who not
only realize the value of health education, but want to attend schools and literacy classes in order
to lead a better life. They acknowledge the empowering role of education; it will help to alleviate

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the poverty that the majority of South Africans live in. They will in turn be able to afford basic
hygiene kits for themselves and their families.

In this context, literacy and non-formal education should serve socially constructive purposes to
prepare South African citizens to actively participate in the process of health, social, cultural and
economic development. It should contribute positively towards bridging the wealth gap and
building a culture of solidarity and tolerance within a framework of multi-ethnicity and cultural
and linguistic diversity. Policy makers and international organizations need to rethink the role of
health, literacy and non-formal adult education so that they impart not only knowledge and skills,
but more importantly, social inclusion.

The prime objective of this project, is to help the whole nation to establish a framework that
reaches out to needy women and girls in the country and enable them to easily access sanitary
pads; secondly, to teach these women and girls about sexual health and prevention of infectious
diseases through non-formal education. The focus of the project will be to assist the local
community leaders in training and developing a provincial body of education, health planners
and trainers who will be in charge of implementing an ambitious community health programs,
with learning objectives for each province and eventually, each town and rural area.

This proposed project aims at harnessing strong political support from intellectuals, politicians,
civil society, NGOs, and the international community. It will also require strong communication
and information media involvement in order to disseminate social inclusion values to all sectors.

Through various survey-based activities, it is expected that the proposed project would provide
the much-needed relief in curbing the shortage of sanitary hygiene kits for the less fortunate. The
project will examine programs designed specially to meet the needs of adolescent girls, and of
women. This project will particularly look into ways these programs reinforce formal health
education, creating thus a more favorable learning environment conducive to full participation
and better achievement.

OBJECTIVES

The overall objective of the project is to provide the basis for creating a channel for alleviating
and providing relief to women and girls by providing sanitary wear. Enforcing a culture of health
awareness in institutional capacities at local, provincial and national levels in policy design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a good sanitary health program.

Specific objectives are:

 To provide, in a short period of time, the knowledge-base required for designing and
implementing large scale, effective sanitary wear distribution programs based on community
mobilization.
 To support innovative projects and programs with a view to reducing the alarming lack of
sanitary pads rate in the country and promote “Sanitary health”.
 To monitor projects and programs leading to a national sanitary pad ease of access system
and health education program.

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ACTIVITIES

The overall objective of the project is to provide the basis for creating a channel for alleviating
and providing relief to women and girls by providing sanitary wear. Enforcing a culture of health
awareness in institutional capacities at local, provincial and national levels in policy design,
implementation, monitoring and evaluation of a good sanitary health program.

Specific objectives are:

 To provide, in a short period of time, the knowledge base required for designing and
implementing large scale, effective sanitary wear distribution programs based on community
mobilization.
 To support innovative projects and programs with a view to reducing the alarming lack of
sanitary pads rate in the country and promote “Sanitary health”.
 To monitor projects and programs leading to a national sanitary pad ease of access system
and health education program.

KAPANDE FOUNDATION will provide technical support and assist the provincial health
department in reviewing past experiences and on-going models of sanitary pads distribution and
health education including those in use by the local communities. It will help the Department in
identifying and training a core group of volunteers, health planners and promoters with a view to
first undertake a country-wide sanitary health survey and then assess implementation strategies
on making the system work particularly for out-of-school girls and women. Another critical
activity which is foreseen in this project is to explore ways and means for intensive advocacy to
persuade political leaders, policy-makers and administrators to reform the system. The core
group of health planners and promoters, in close cooperation with provincial decision makers
and, will be in charge of conducting the survey, undertake advocacy activities and plan the
implementation of the first phase of the sanitary health programme.
Based on the success of Community Learning Centers in the KwaZulu Natal province
KAPANDE FOUNDATION will facilitate networking for promoting better policy dialogue and
more cooperative and collaborative approaches. These will be channeled in efforts aimed at
eradicating poverty and reducing ignorance and lack of sanitary and sexual health awareness.
Having greater impact on the government’s decisions at the local community and provincial
levels with a focused attention to the re-insertion of girls and women into a health educational
life.
We would want to establish framework that promotes Self-reliance initiatives such as small-scale
reusable/washable sanitary pads production. We would also want to donate machinery to the
community such that they can implement a project of this nature.

The project will thus consist of a provincial planning meeting, technical expert meetings,
provincial training workshops, case studies and at a later stage a provincial follow-up and
evaluation meeting. In summary, KAPANDE FOUNDATION`s contribution will include:

 Technical assistance for training and monitoring;

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  Development and distribution of prototype training/learning materials;
 Establishment of provincial and sub-provincial networks;
 Helping with the creation of a favourable environment conducive to poverty alleviation;
promotion of informal and community-based approaches capitalizing on capacities of the
rural poor and aiming at self-reliance;
 Assistance in the development of a holistic community information system to enable
“one-step” access to relevant data and information;
 Encouragement of bottom-up, people-centred community initiatives, alternative modes of
education (e.g. multi-purpose comprehensive community learning centres), and social
support services;
 Harnessing the support of media such as radio, for the support and development of
sanitary pads distribution and health education activities, by paying full attention to the
ethnic diversity of the country; and
 Networking and sharing among government and non-government institutions and
community-based organizations.

Specific Activities:

 Provincial Planning Meeting on the planning and management of sanitary pads

distribution and sanitary health education, programmers and activities will be
organized to (i) clarify the main issues and conceptual/operational framework of the
project; (ii) share the national experience and review the state-of-the-art of and
progress made in the policies, approaches and strategies for planning and
implementing sanitary pads distribution and sanitary health education programmers
and activities (frequency, quality and reliability data collection and analysis; and (iii)
initiating networking among NGOs and other health stakeholders.
 Identification and training a core group of health planners, trainers and promoters to
undertake a rapid survey i) on sanitary health levels (random- survey and other
techniques), if possible, in all communities and of the province, ii) available teacher
potential, iii) available local facilities, and iv) enlisting local support from elders and
village leaders for sanitary health programmers. The work results of these sanitary
health promoters and pioneers, especially their advocacy achievements, will be
crucial for the further success of the sanitary health programmed.
 Scanning Exercise of already existing sanitary health programmers will be undertaken
to identify projects and programmes with potential for scaling up or for dissemination
of lessons learnt. Based on the scanning exercise, some selected projects will be
subject to an in-depth analysis for providing inspiration and models for “how to do
it”. The results of the survey and the scanning exercise will both be used for assisting
the provincial authorities with developing a realistic provincial sanitary health plan,
with short- and medium-term objectives.
 Technical Workshop will involve the development of a set of “guiding materials” for
training health personnel and community development agents in the planning and
management of integrated sanitary pads distribution and sanitary health education
programmers as the key strategy for value creation. Furthermore, it is for promoting
democratic social cohesion, building a culture of peace, solidarity and tolerance

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 within a framework of multi-ethnicity and cultural diversity and for poverty
alleviation.
 Implementation of Sanitary pads distribution and Sanitary health education
Programmes will begin from an early stage through support to existing innovative
programmes that are willing to work within the parameters described above,
including communication promoting social cohesion, peace-building, health etc, and
linkage to media such as radio programmes, and with a community-based approach.
The provincial programme will subsequently be developed based on policy criteria
developed by the Department of Women.
 NFE Data Collection and Analysis mechanisms will be set up as the project develops,
but only after the initial phase of the first survey and first sanitary health activities
have been undertaken and concluded; it is planned to identify and train a core group
of planners, statisticians and data collectors, so as to lay the foundations for a
comprehensive sanitary health system, enabling the provincial health planners and
administrators at a later stage, to collect, assimilate, analyse and report systematically
both the quantitative and qualitative information for the planning of sanitary health
follow-up activities at various levels of administrative hierarchy.

An indicative time frame for the activities to be implemented during the project is shown
below.

June 2019 Provincial Planning Meeting;

Training of core group of health planners, trainers and promoters,
and beginning of provincial-wide survey;
Beginning of advocacy work for sanitary health in provincial
capitals, joint meetings with village and tribal elders;
Establishing of Sanitary health committees and centers in
provincial capitals.
July - August 2019 Technical expert meeting for strengthening (Assessment of
hardware, software furniture, stationery and other logistic support),
designing/redesigning the provincial sanitary health framework,
materials production and for developing teaching-learning
resources for CLCs.
Sept 2019 Trial of innovative approaches in selected CLCs and other health
centers, as identified in first survey; focus will be to multiply these
centers as much as possible.
October 2019 Building national capacity of health planners, administrators,
teachers/volunteers/facilitators and community leaders.
Nov 2019 – Dec 2019 Design/redesign the provincial sanitary health framework and
develop teaching-learning resources for CLCs.
Evaluation and synthesis of project activities during the first six
months. Launch of provincial sanitary pads distribution and
sanitary health education programs, under the auspices of the
Department of Health, Department of Women and Department of
Education.

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 Item Description Amount
1 Training of core group of health and education planners/trainers $ 70
2 Provincial survey and advocacy $ 10
3 Establishing community sanitary health centers $ 100
4 Review of framework on sanitary health program at the district levels $ 20
5 Procurement of sewing and overlocking machinery $ 3000
6 Procurement of fabric and textile material $ 1000
7 Manufacturing and distribution of Sanitary pads $ 300
8 Transport and logistics $ 500
$ 5 000,00

Total (1 year) USD 5 000 (ZAR 72 000)

OUTPUTS

The proposed project is a modest effort in manufacturing and distributing reusable/washable

sanitary pads to women and girls as well as educating them of sanitary health issues and creating
awareness of the same. We also intend to train Self Reliance skills in the process and to analyze
and identify critical issues and problems related to the health and education of millions of
children, youth and adults. Particularly girls and women, who are not or have not been
beneficiaries of the health and skills training system. The project intends to provide a first-hand
account of issues and challenges related to planning and management of sanitary health,
identifying projects that work and can be easily scaled up and disseminated. In particular the
results and outcomes of this undertaking, linking both upstream and immediate implementation,
will include:

 The preparation of large-scale project and program proposals which are likely to attract
and mobilize sufficient funds and which will be based on (i) a more detailed needs
analysis; (ii) analysis of existing sanitary health mechanisms - what works in sanitary
health programs in South Africa; and (iii) as assessment of the capacities of South
African governmental and non-governmental organizations, provincial and local
capacities and needs.
 An in-depth analysis of problems and issues related to access and quality of girls and
women health education and innovative initiatives to be taken for their integration in the
mainstream of schooling and social life;
 A reference document for consultation with the national planners and policy-makers,
selected academia, NGOs, private bodies, UN and other bilateral development partners
for raising and seeking technical and financial commitments;
 Multimedia sanitary health/training materials developed, specially by involving radio and
developing existing projects.
 Provincial/district networks strengthened;

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  Holistic information/data collected on sanitary pads distribution and sanitary health
education experiences and development opportunities; locally specific development
needs of the poor assessed; and
 Local and provincial facilitators of community-based sanitary health programmers
trained and retrained;
 Consolidation of on-going sanitary health programmes and initiating of innovative pilot
projects and a provincial sanitary health programmes.

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Beneficiaries
 Basic health and education planners, administrators, and project managers, practitioners,
trainers and facilitators at all levels.
 Key policy decision-makers, trainers, leaders of NGOs and village elders and /or tribal
leaders who are involved in designing and implementing, monitoring and evaluating sanitary
health programs
 Rural and urban poor, the orphaned and vulnerable, especially adolescent girls and women.