In many cases, what underlies a successful social enterprise or nonprofit organization is a resourceful, relentless drive to match the right diagnosis of a problem with the right design for a solution. In a Viewpoint article titled “The Gift of Time,” which appears in the Fall 2015 issue of SSIR, Celeste Mergens describes the journey that led her first to identify a chronic global problem—the loss of opportunity that occurs when women and girls lack effective feminine hygiene products—and then to fashion a reliable way to address that problem. Mergens is the founder and executive director of Days for Girls, a nonprofit that distributes reusable menstrual pads to women and girls in more than 85 countries worldwide.
To supplement the article, we offer a pair of items that illuminate the origin and the structure of the Days for Girls solution. This material appears here in its original form and with the permission of Days for Girls.
Mergens, as she notes in her Viewpoint article, launched Days for Girls after witnessing firsthand the plight of girls at an orphanage in Kenya. Once they reach puberty and begin menstruating, she explains, girls in that part of the world are often unable to engage fully in school, work, and community activities. In a talk that she gave in 2103 at TEDx Bellingham (Wash.), Mergens recounts that story and also discusses the lessons that she has gained from listening to people like those girls in Kenya.
The Story of Days for Girls
“How can we be relevant? How can we be culturally, physically, environmentally responsive, if we don’t ask those we serve what works for them? Their wisdom is greater, greater than ours.”—Celeste Mergens, in her TEDx talk
The Days for Girls menstrual pad is just one element of a larger system that allows the organization to finance, produce, and distribute its feminine hygiene solution. One notable feature of the organization, for example, is the chapter- and team-based structure that enables Days for Girls to bring its products to the places where women and girls need them most. The organization has created a one-page infographic that sets forth its global vision and structure, and here we invite readers to view that infographic image.
A Lot Can Happen in Three Years
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