Girls Tubonge – Kangundo, Machakos County – 17 August 2024

Collaboration between Youth Care Africa and The Sew Bee-Cause Foundation

Embarking on our biggest Angel Wings© request to date was somewhat daunting. Having connected with the powerhouse that is Jeff Onsombi, founder of Youth Care Africa, during our previous visit to Kenya in February 2024, he tasked us with a huge consignment of 300 Angel Wings© Kits for a Tubonge that he was planning in August of this year.

Angel Wings© are our version of reusable sanitary pads, and our kits consist of 6-8 pads, underwear and a bar of soap. As we are always trying to improve and provide the best and most useful kit for the women that we provide these kits to, one of our members came up with the brilliant idea of a crocheted Soap Saver pouch, this is to keep the soap in to aid with the washing of the pads as it provides a textured surface to clean the pads as well as being able to hang the soap up to dry in it which prolongs the life of the soap for the women to use.

With the mighty goal of 1800 – 2400 pads, 300 Soap Savers and 300 pouches being needed, our amazing volunteers set to work.

The original plan was that Fahmida and I would once again accompany the consignment of Angel Wings© Kits to Kenya and take part in the Tubonge. Tubonge literally means ‘to talk’ in Swahili, this was an event to be held over a few days where we would educate the girls on menstrual health and hygiene and explain exactly how to use and care for the Angel Wings© pads, as well as a 3 day workshop training leaders of various educational institutes in the area on making the Angel Wings© pads whereby they could pass on these skills to their students thus creating a self sufficient environment .

Sadly due to the current political unrest in Kenya it was deemed unsafe for us to go and so we then embarked on a whole new journey negotiating how to send the 6 boxes of Angel Wings© kits weighing some 70+ kilos in the most time efficient and cost effective way. It was certainly a new learning curve for Fahmida and I!

As always, our wonderful team was able to assist in so many ways and between the UAE team and the team in Kenya we managed to get the 300 kits on their way and arrived in good time for the Tubonge.

We were deeply disappointed not to be accompanying the kits and being unable to deliver the planned training. However, we remain hopeful that we can still do so in the future.

Despite this setback, we are immensely proud of the tremendous effort everyone put into creating this significant consignment and that the young women were still able to receive the kits.

The Tubonge went ahead albeit in a different location county to the original plan as there were riots underway in Bomet County. After careful consideration, the event was moved to Kangundo, Machakos county and our Angel Wings© kits were distributed alongside some disposable pads provided by one of the other sponsors of the event.

There was a huge turnout of young women and we hope that the explanation delivered by the Kenyan team regarding our sustainable and reusable Angel Wings© kits, will help with the transition towards a more sustainable practice around menstruation which will help these young women to have sanitary protection for an extended amount of time since our kits can last approximately 3 years with the right care, as opposed to disposable pads that obviously only last for one use.