Menstrual hygiene for girls: a project launched to support Togo's initiatives on good practices

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Extract from the article: La ministre en charge de la Promotion de la Femme, Pr Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou, a lancé, le mercredi 28 Août 2025 à Lomé, le « projet d’appui aux initiatives du Togo pour la sensibilisation des jeunes filles et garçons sur l’hygiène personnelle et mens

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On Wednesday, August 28, 2025, in Lomé, the Minister for the Advancement of Women, Prof. Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou, launched the "project to support Togo's initiatives to raise awareness among girls and boys about personal and menstrual hygiene ." This project by the West African Health Organization (WAHO) aims to educate and train young people on good hygiene practices.

The difficulties women face with regard to menstrual hygiene are linked to menstrual insecurity, which encompasses problems of access to hygiene products, lack of adequate sanitary facilities, financial and geographical constraints, stigmatization, cultural taboos, and inequalities. These obstacles have negative consequences on the health, education, and well-being of women and girls, leading to infections, school absenteeism, and limited social participation. In order to address these major challenges, ECOWAS, through the West African Health Organization (WAHO), has set up the “project to support Togo's initiatives to raise awareness among young girls and boys about personal and menstrual hygiene.”

This project was launched by the Minister of Social Action, Solidarity, and Women's Empowerment, Prof. Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou. The overall goal is to raise the community's profile by improving young people's health and dignity. More specifically, it aims to inform and educate girls and boys about good hygiene practices in order to prevent sexually transmitted infections linked to poor hygiene. It also aims to train young female seamstresses in the manufacture of reusable sanitary towel kits. The project also helps to combat period poverty by providing these reusable sanitary pads. This one-year project will also have a positive environmental impact, as unlike disposable sanitary pads, which contribute to plastic pollution, reusable pads are sustainable and environmentally friendly, offering an eco-friendly alternative to disposable products.

Three partner organizations have been identified for the strategic implementation of the project in the Maritime (Lomé), Kara (Kara), and Plateaux (Anié) regions. These are the Togolese Association for Family Welfare (ATBEF) and the Togolese Association for Social Marketing (ATMS), which will jointly be responsible for awareness-raising, training, and the production and distribution of sanitary towel kits, the development of which has been entrusted to Handicap Actions Togo.

Training workshops will be organized in schools and community centers in the three target locations to teach good hygiene practices to young girls and boys, teachers, and parents.

An economical and environmentally friendly alternative to disposable products

During the project, 100 young female seamstresses from Lomé, Anié, and Kara will be trained and each provided with sewing machines and materials for designing sanitary pad kits. They will make more than 15,000 reusable sanitary pads to create 5,000 kits for distribution in 12 school complexes. This will take place during awareness campaigns targeting teachers, parents, and bosses of learning centers in each of the three locations.

At the launch, Minister Kossiwa Zinsou-Klassou welcomed the arrival of this project, which represents "an economical and ecological alternative to disposable products, which are often expensive and polluting. In addition, the training of 100 young seamstresses... will create a virtuous circle, strengthening local skills, promoting women's economic independence, and providing a sustainable solution for thousands of young girls."

For the ECOWAS resident representative in Togo, Barros Bacar Banjai, this is a real response to the crucial challenges faced by many women and girls in member countries. Its "originality lies in the fact that it is a pilot initiative, whose approach to empowering young girls will have an impact on its sustainability. It is intended to be catalytic with seed funding and will have positive results... which will be replicated at the ECOWAS level through other projects along the same lines, but on a different scale," he added.

Source: Togo Presse