Kenyan girls with Save a Girl™ kits

TGUP's Nepal Sewing Center

New Tanzanian Sewing Center

Tanzanian facility provides free sanitary kits to adolescent girls

LIVERMORE, CALIFORNIA, USA, October 14, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Global Uplift Project (TGUP) is one of the leading global suppliers of washable, reusable sanitary kits that are given, free of charge, to adolescent girls in developing countries. It has just opened a new sewing center in Tanzania to sew its Save a Girl™ sanitary kits which help girls manage their periods so they can stay in school.

The new Tanzanian center, in Loibor-Siret, brings to three the number of sewing centers TGUP operates globally. The other two centers, in Kenya and Nepal, have made and distributed more than 40,000 Save a Girl™ kits in the last four years. The kits have been distributed in eight countries.

When a girl reaches puberty, if she doesn’t have a way to manage her period, she begins missing school each month. Eventually, she falls so far behind she drops out. UNICEF estimates that this happens to more than 20,000,000 girls each year. It is probably the greatest preventable loss of human potential in the world.

A TGUP Save a Girl™ kit includes two leak-proof shields and eight interchangeable absorbent pads. It costs $6 to make and lasts three years. They are given free of charge to recipient girls.

According to the World Bank, better educated young women deliver an astonishing array of pro-development characteristics. They have fewer sex partners, are more likely to use contraception, marry later, have fewer children, see that those children are better educated themselves, have better vocational options, and contribute more to their communities.

Brenda Birrell, TGUP's Save a Girl™ Program Director, observes “Keeping an adolescent girl in school for $2 a year might be one of the highest returns on human investment in the world. It is certainly one of the most humane.”

TGUP operates its sewing centers in partnership with local Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs). The new center in Tanzania will be run by Humanity for Children which has been providing relief and development services in East Africa for 17 years.

All of the TGUP sewing centers employ local seamstresses to sew the Save a Girl™ kits. They earn a wage that is typically 40% higher than the national average. In many cases, this is the first paying job that have ever had.

The Tanzanian center was funded by grants from San Francisco Bay Area Rotary International clubs, including Belmont, Livermore, and Palo Alto. Rotary International has more than 1,000,000 members in more than 1,000 clubs worldwide. It is the world’s largest organization of locally-based but internationally-focused service clubs.

The Global Uplift Project is a 501c3 nonprofit based in Livermore, CA. It builds small-scale, low-cost, high impact infrastructure projects in the developing world. It has completed 256 such projects in 24 countries. Over their lives, those projects will help more than 1,500,000 of the poorest people in the world have just a slightly better chance in life.

TGUP has raised funds from private foundations that cover all of its operating costs—salaries, literature, web site, travel, etc. As a result, 100% of every dollar donated by an individual or service club goes to the donor’s intended project.

Robert Freeman
The Global Uplift Project
+1 650-575-3434
email us here

Save a Girl Program