Jeannette Kawera, a journalist with The New Times, has been recognised for her efforts to fight period poverty among students who come from poor families. In November last year, Kawera launched a campaign with an aim to contribute to ending period poverty among girls in rural Rwanda. The award was presented by Karisimbi Events as part of its annual Consumer Choice Awards—formally Made in Rwanda Awards. She told The New Times, the award is a special recognition of what she did by bringing positive change in society through providing free sanitary pads to the girls studying in rural areas who come from poor households. “Saying that I am so overwhelmed with joy would be an understatement. I am feeling so happy and this award proved to me that all I did had never gone in vain,” she says. She added that the recognition demonstrates that she and her team did an amazing job. “This award is for my mother and siblings who raised me and trained me to leave the world better than how I found it and support me in all humanitarian acts that I can think of. My friends and colleagues that supported me in all my charity events are recognised as well here too”. Kawera chose to advocate for period poverty because she knows how not being able to have sanitary pads can cause stigma, sickness, and depression among young girls. She believes that if all Rwandans took an initiative to help at least one girl from a poor family that they know, this issue can come to an end. While starting the campaign, she said she was confronted by challenges such as bullying and disparaging comments from people who stigmatise menstrual periods and those who still regard it as a taboo topic to raise in society. This is in addition to financial challenges. “I was all alone and sometimes I could get bullied, however, since I knew well the truth around that and all sexual reproductive health and rights, I kept on learning more about and the more I learned the more I shared with people in and out of my circle,” she says. Kawera has been involved in a couple of charities involving lending a helping hand to the poor, patients, and children with disabilities. In the November campaign, they distributed sanitary pads to almost 2,000 girls where each got three packets to cover the first academic trimester and donated more than 100 packets of pads to each school to be used in case a girl gets her periods.
