An interview with Sudi, Amala Alumna & Founder of Girl Power
Sudi is 23 years old and is originally from Somalia but now lives in Kakuma Camp. She was one of the pioneering students who graduated from the Amala High School Diploma in Kakuma in September 2022. The High School Diploma gave Sudi a second chance to finish her high school education and motivated her to encourage other girls to continue their education.
After visiting a primary school in Kakuma one day, she saw a girl outside, crying and embarrassed because she had her first period and her classmates were making fun of her. This inspired Sudi to launch a project that will help more girls who unfortunately end up missing school when they are on their period. Girl Power aims to educate young people about menstruation, to alleviate period poverty, and to spread awareness in communities that hold the subject of menstruation as taboo. Sudi has mobilised funding for the project and has provided sanitary towels to over 500 young refugees in Kakuma primary schools to date.
We sat down with Sudi to learn more about the instrumental work she has been doing in Kakuma through her initiative, Girl Power.
“Before Amala I didn’t know how to manage a project, how to even start, how to organise ideas, how to put them into action; but with the help of Amala I learned how to manage a project. So it was all thanks to Amala because if I hadn’t been a part of it, I wouldn’t have had that level of help.”
What inspired you to launch Girl Power? Did you have the idea before you started studying at Amala?
Actually when I came to Amala I didn’t have any idea of what I wanted to do. We had to create a project for our PIP [Personal Interest Project] so that's when my first project idea came to me. But I actually ended up changing my project because of a scenario that happened when I was in one of the primary schools in Kakuma. I saw a small girl crying behind the toilets and when I asked her what was wrong she said that she was very sick, and was going to die. She had gotten her period and was terrified. I had to explain to her that she wasn’t dying, and luckily I had a pad in my bag, and helped her out. She was crying because everyone in her class was making fun of her, and the boys were attacking her because they didn't know anything about it. After that I realised that this is something that has to be addressed, so I changed my project to what became Girl Power Initiative.
We started a project that’s called #padsforhappinness which will bring smiles to menstruating girls in schools like this, and so they won’t feel ashamed for whatever they’re experiencing because it’s a biological thing, not something that they should feel ashamed of. So the whole idea came out of this experience because Amala has given me an opportunity to be open-minded, to look around and see.
Can you tell us about some of the activities that you do at Girl Power Initiative?
Sudi presenting on her PIP, Girl Power Initiative, at her graduation
So we started in October this year. Before October I went to Nairobi and I met a lady called Sahara and when I explained to her the idea she wanted to work with us. She fundraised for 500 pads for girls, which was extremely helpful.
Now that we’ve launched the project we are mostly focusing on ending period poverty and to end the stigmatisation around periods through educating girls about menstruation and sexual health. In our communities we don’t really talk about periods. Your mother will not talk to you about it until you reach that point, and when you do you are told to hide yourself. It is a taboo subject. So our first objective was to clear that, and to have an open discussion with the girls, mostly primary school girls, and their parents. We want to remove the stigmatisation and make this a natural thing to discuss with their girls, because it will happen eventually and if you’ve never been told then it becomes a terrifying thing because you don’t know what’s happening to you.
We also want to educate boys, to teach them sensitivity, and that they should not make fun of girls experiencing these things. Many of these girls don’t come to school on the days they are menstruating. So we have started with ten schools in Kakuma and thankfully alongside the donation of 500 sanitary pads we have begun to make change!
Sudi at the Amala centre in Kakuma
#padsforhappiness sounds like a great campaign. Can you tell us more about pads and how you sourced them? Are they reusable?
Yes, in Kakuma it is hard for families to afford sanitary pads for their girls on a monthly basis. That is why we wanted to use reusable pads, because they can be used for a year and a half. There is a company that makes them in Kakuma called KDII. We teamed up with them and then we bring them to girls who need them in Kakuma and Kalobeyei. We have trained 300 girls in the past month.
How do you find the girls? Do you go to schools or work with organisations?
What we mostly do is go to schools by obtaining an acceptance letter to visit the schools. Then we go on Fridays to the schools to organise [the workshops]. We talk to the teacher, who has already received the email, and we explain the objective of the project and we tell them we need: fifty girls, mainly those who can’t afford [pads], from this school. After that we meet with those fifty girls on Saturday afternoon, and give them training, and have fun with them and give out the pads. We have also gone to the host community because we don’t want to leave them behind.
And have you had any training or workshops with boys yet?
Not yet. The schools were asking us if we could have mentorship programmes with the boys, but we still don’t have enough people on the team. So we’re starting with the girls and after that we'll go with the boys, because it is very important for the boys to understand as well. It is part of the project, but first we need to register as an organisation here in Kakuma. The problem is that we need at least 10-15 members with an ID to do so, but most of our members don’t have one, so we need to find other volunteers who do, in order to register. And obtaining an ID takes time, around a year, and the process is further complicated by the bureaucracy of everything.
The Girl Power Initiative team (source: Girl Power Twitter)
Tell me more about your team. Are they from Amala? How many times do you meet?
Well there is one who was my workmate from Amala’s second cohort of the Diploma Programme who joined us along the way. Right now there are eight of us, and we also have a team of six from Kalobeyei Settlement; all are very hardworking and have a heart for helping others. We mostly meet on Saturdays. One Saturday we’ll have training [with the girls] and the other we’ll meet up and talk about the activity, discuss what we did and didn’t cover, and then plan what we’ll do the following week.
Do you think your studies at Amala have helped you with this project?
Yeah absolutely, because before Amala I didn’t know how to manage a project, how to even start, how to organise ideas, how to put them into action; but with the help of Amala I learned how to manage a project. So it was all thanks to Amala because if I hadn’t been a part of it, I wouldn’t have had that level of help. Also this was my PIP project, so the process of working on my presentation and writing my proposal really helped in the development of the project.
What aspirations do you have for the future of Girl Power Initiative?
In the future we are hoping to get Amala to refurbish the ladies’ toilets and if possible to get some pads so that the female students can use them if they get their period unexpectedly. We are also looking for another source of funds, as the NGO who was helping us, their project ends in July, so we will be the only ones who are helping out. Another thing is that we are looking for an office to work out of, because an issue we have is that the girls don’t have a safe space to visit us and talk about their problems, which means we can’t give them further help with the issues they face. Lastly, we are hoping to host an event at the Women Deliver conference in Rwanda, so that we can speak about Amala and our work.
Sudi is involved in local journalism in Kakuma and her ambition is to access higher education and become a professional photographer and journalist. Learn more about her work here.
Check out a poem Sudi wrote about the joys & stigmas of womanhood on #TheUnheardProject here.
Follow Sudi on Twitter here. Follow Girl Power Initiative on Twitter here.
This interview was transcribed by Amala volunteer; Sophia Dermetzis.
