What Boys Do To School Girls Menstruating –Her Liberty

What do you think should be the attitude of boys to school girls menstruating?

One of sympathy or understanding, but not so in this case under review, a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), Her Liberty has discovered.

Beyond just the discovery, it has decided to do something to stem associated sigmatisation of school girls menstruating.

Its Programme Manager, Hastings Banda, has just addressed a meeting in Zomba area of Southern Malawi where other stakeholders met to discuss youth development.

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He cited a recent research conducted at Namikhate Primary School in Traditional Authority Mwambo, as revealing much.

One of such was that girls fail to go to washroom as boys make fun of them upon knowing that they’re menstruating.

To checkmate that, he was of the opinion for government and its partners to introduce programmes that should involve boys to openly discuss issues of menstrual hygiene.

The purpose he said, would be to enable the boys, appreciate menstrual hygiene and eventually end discrimination and stigma associated with menstruation.

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“Issues of menstruation should openly be discussed and should not be culturally sensitive. People should understand that some girls drop out of school following mockery by boys,” Malawi 24 quotes him as saying.

Another participant who spoke at the event was Youth Officer at Zomba District Council, Sharon Kumwembe

She praised the NGO for the initiative and for backing it up with research, adding that her office would share the research findings with council service committee on education.

The aim, she added, would be to find ways of dealing with challenges facing menstrual hygiene in schools.

Some other persons who attended the event were from the District Youth Office, District Sports Office, Zomba District Education Office, Zomba City Youth Office and a number of NGO in youth development sector attended the interface meeting.

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The Eagle reports that Faith Kadzanja, in her article,  Girls in Menstrua Trouble published last year, submitted that “In Malawi, where almost half of the population lives below the poverty line and 25 in every 100 people live in extreme poverty, only a few girls and women afford sanitary pads.Menstruation, lasting an average of five days, requires an average of 10 pads fetching around K600 ($1.37) a month”.

In a way, it corroborates Her Liberty’s concern what boys do to school girls menstruating, especially stigmatization for those of them who may not afford best the necessary things to keep clean and confident at that time of the month.