Project Ensonga - Days for Girls
Keeping girls in school - no matter what time
of the month it is.
Ugandan girls without menstrual supplies often stay home from school during their periods, missing up to two months of education and opportunity each year. This story is common around the world.
Project Ensonga, which started in 2016, makes and distributes washable menstrual kits for ECHOES’ partner projects: Trinity Children’s Centre, Centenary High School, and Double Cure Hospital, AND for girls and women beyond Uganda. (Ensonga means “Issue” in Lugandan which is a word that is used to refer to your menstrual cycle.)
Designed by Days for Girls International (DfG), the kits are washable, last up to three years, and are distributed with menstrual health education. After the kits were distributed in other Ugandan schools, girls’ absentee rates dropped from 36% to 6%.
As of June 2024, Project Ensonga – Days for Girls Wayne PA Chapter has assembled 6,567 kits – 1,182,060 days given back to girls and women! 44% of the kits were distributed locally to help fight period poverty in our own community.
Kits are made by volunteers in the Wayne, PA community and beyond. We have worked with over 15 companies, religious organizations, and schools doing presentations on DfG and period poverty, along with hands on activities to create kits. Sewers and non-sewers are welcome to our sewing sessions. If you are interested in helping contact Leslie at leslie@supportechoes.org.
Masaka Uganda M-E June 2022
Sarah Serunjogi and her team of sewers became an official Gold Certified Days for Girls Enterprise in June 2022. They are now able to fill orders for Days for Girls kits in Uganda and get paid to make them. This process started in October 2016, when Days for Girls came to Trinity Children’s Centre to teach the tailors and some students to make Days for Girls kits. Project Ensonga has been assisting them in this journey by sending money for fabric and sewing machines necessary to start this enterprise. During Covid, they were able to continue making DfG kits for the girls and teachers at Trinity and Centenary when we were unable to travel to Uganda with kits.
In October 2022, the enterprise filled their first order of 100 kits - they spent 3 days in Gulu delivering and teaching the menstrual health course. This is an amazing accomplishment!!
Uganda Trip November 2023
Leslie, Eileen and Elizabeth visited the Days for Girls office in Kampala with Sarah Serunjogi before distributing 200 DfG menstrual kits made by Sarah’s DfG Enterprise at a school in Kampala. Sewing supplies and Days for Girls swag were given to the tailors at Trinity who have been making the kits – they were thrilled to have these items and really love making the kits. Funds raised through ECHOES were used to buy materials from the DfG office to make 300 kits for the Trinity Children’s Centre and Centenary High School students who need them.
