A celeb's charity, a corporate and a university have collaborated to save thousands of learning and teaching hours for women students forced to miss classes during their period because they can't afford sanitary pads. Gasant Abarder writes in a new SliceofGasant column that the multi-talented Capetonian is just beginning.
Siv Ngesi is hard to define. An enigma who is at once a talented TV and screen actor, comedian, social media superstar and MC who isn't afraid of controversy when it serves the right cause. But it is perhaps his deep-rooted activism that will make his biggest contribution to society yet.
Last week, ahead of Women's Day, Siv's MENstruation Foundation, run with his co-founder Marius Basson, collaborated with the Clicks Helping Hand Trust and the University of the Western Cape UWC to unveil several dispensing machines located across the institution's three campuses. Students in need of sanitary pads can pick up a token from the university and get free pads from the machines. The pads are military grade and have been proven effective by women soldiers in combat.
Law graduate and Bok Rugby captain Babalwa Latsha with Siv Ngesi at the unveiling of the sanitary pad dispensing machines at the University of the Western Cape
What is period poverty? Simply put, a staggering 8 million South African women can't afford pads. Four million of these are at school or a higher education institution, and that means 24 million education days lost each year. One in three schoolgirls misses 60 schooldays each year because of period poverty, according to the MENstruation Foundation.