Founding Story
At The Beginning
I started Kaja Eco Production Ltd out of empathy for women and girls in Cameroon especially those from rural communities. I had my first period at a very early age with no prior knowledge about menstruation. Thus I used rags and other makeshift options during my period which were detrimental to health.
Still At The Beginning
When I visited Cameroon for vacation after many years in the USA, I decided to do an in-depth research to find out what girls were using during their monthly period. I was left bewildered. Many girls did not have access to affordable sanitary pads. Binta, a 15 years old teenage mother from a certain Muslim community told me that she was forced into marriage at the age of 12 because her parents thought that buying sanitary pads was expensive and a waste of money. Cecilia, a secondary school student in Bamenda told me that she exchanges sex for money to buy pads.
Kuja Pads Initiative 2015
So coming full circle I felt compelled to do something to help. Life feels better for me when I help, and this is how I decided to do so. First I launched a self funded project where I brought pads from New York and donated to girls in schools and orphanages in rural communities in the North West region of Cameroon. More than 5000 girls and 40 teachers benefited from the program.
One Million Pads project 2016
In 2016, I launched yet another project called 1 Million pads project with the aim of amassing 1 Million pads by the year 2020 for girls in Cameroon. Pad donation started pouring in from all over the world. However, these projects were not sustainable because the cost of shipping pads from the US and Europe was overwhelming.
Biodegradable sanitary pads
When many people look at problems in the third world, they immediately think “Charity" but at this time what stroke me the most was Social Entrepreneurship. So that's how I started KujaEcoPads with the one –on- one Tom’s shoes business model. I knew if we could get people to buy our pads and continue to buy our pads, we could sustain the giving and that will solve the problem of period poverty in Cameroon.
