On 27 September, Livingstone High School in the Claremont school district received a free sanitary pad dispensing machine, sponsored by The RE/MAX Foundation and supplied by the MENstruation Foundation & O Grace Land –  NPO’s that strives to create free access to sanitary pads for young women during their menstrual cycle.

Countless girls in South Africa regularly miss school to stay at home because of menstruation, limiting their ability to equally participate in their schooling. To help young girls overcome this, The RE/MAX Foundation donated R25,000 to the MENstruation Foundation. The dispensing machine at Livingstone is one of three vending machines that will be part-paid for by this donation. The remaining two installations are expected to be placed over the next month or so.

Each school receiving a dispenser will be issued with tokens and the school will distribute these to the girls every month. Each schoolgirl receives one token that she can use at the Sanitary Pad Vending Machine to retrieve a pack of eight sanitary pads per month. The MENstruation Foundation will stock the machines as often as necessary for 12 months – at no charge to the school nor their pupils.

These dispensing machines are 100% South African manufactured and do not need electricity to operate – which means they can be installed anywhere. The pads are locally manufactured and eco-friendly.

Siv Ngesi, Co-Founder and Director of this Foundation, is quoted saying: “If men bled once a month, sanitary products would be free. Condoms are free and sanitary products are not, it is a failure of justice.”

For more information about The RE/MAX Foundation, click here. For more information on how to support The MENstruation Foundation and O Grace Land, click here.