Results tagged “SHE” from :: ( CRIT ) :: DESIGN BLOG ::

Elizabeth Scharpf, founder and Chief Instigating Officer of Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE), spoke last Monday to Allan Chochinov’s class in the MFA Design program. The goal was to inspire students as they embark on a final project about women and girls in his 3D design class.

Armed with both a Harvard MBA and MPA in International Development, Elizabeth left school with enough credentials to take on the world. Serendipitously, her work at the World Bank in Mozambique, Africa led her to coach a girl’s soccer team. It was here that she first learned of the lack of access to sanitary pads, when one of the girls had to miss practice because she was menstruating. Elizabeth went on to found SHE and started the first business model in Rwanda, where she helped local women jump-start their own businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable, quality, and eco-friendly sanitary pads.

The high cost of the sanitary pads were attributed to three crucial factors: tax, distribution and raw material costs, which Elizabeth and her team in turn tackled. After a period of research and experimentation, they came through with a lower cost, locally produced material developed from the bark of the banana tree, and have trained a network of women on hygiene and care to start manufacturing and distributing the pads on the ground. SHE reduced the cost of a sanitary pad from $1.10 to $0.70, and is hard at work lobbying local legislators to remove or reduce the tax on the product to lower the costs even further.

Elizabeth’s passion and energy for this cause reverberated in SHE’s landmark successes thus far. To find out more, please visit SHE at: http://sheinnovates.com/ and take a look at the campaign here.