People & Planet

People

Combating Period Poverty

Periods are a natural process and an important part of nearly every girl’s life. Not having access to adequate period products can often lead to huge feelings of shame and embarrassment, resulting in many girls having no option but to stay home and miss out on school for up to 50 DAYS A YEAR! 

We believe no one should be held back because of their period, so Bucket Hats Against Period Poverty is an initiative that we have set up to help combat this! 

A total of 90% of profits from the sales of our ‘Charity Edition’ products will go towards purchasing period products (single use tampons and sanitary pads) to then be donated to schools across Kenya.

We have partnered with Loldia Primary School located in the Rift Valley region of Kenya. Loldia Primary School has 2006 students in total with 360 girls in their top year. Many of their students live in very remote areas, with some walking several hours every day just to get to school. As a result you can imagine that simply getting access to period products is a tall order, not to mention the cost of them for parents who are struggling to put food on the table. 

Loldia Primary School has an amazing system where they have a storage space already set up for period products that can be accessed by any student who feels they need them. HOWEVER when talking to the Headmaster, Joseph Njeru, it became starkly apparent that the school was in desperate need for many more products than what they were receiving, and this is the case with so many schools across Kenya and wider Africa! With your help, we are committing ourselves to donating as many products as we possibly can! In the future we hope to partner with many more schools to make as much of an impact as possible!

So please join us on our mission and purchase one of our pink handmade bucket hats!

Update

In October 2023 we returned to Loldia Primary School to do our second donation. 

In the Kenyan school system their Christmas break is equivalent to the long European summer break.  Due to not having access to the school stores, the girls at the school would usually not have access to sanitary products over the break. 

However, this year is different! With the money raised from you buying from our Pink Bucket Hat range, we managed to supply the girls of Loldia Primary School with enough sanitary products for the whole break, allowing each girl to take home the supplies she felt she needed.

It really made us feel so happy that our donation was directly helping the girls. THIS is why we go and donate products ourselves: to see the direct impact that we make really hits home so much more than donating to a large charity. 

The Elephant in the room

Lastly, I want to address the elephant in the room... the single use pads that we have been donating. 

The sad reality for many girls in Kenya and across Africa is that they have little to no access to clean, running water. This means that they would be unable to wash any reusable products thoroughly, leading to serious health risks. 

Furthermore, finding reusable sanitary products in Kenya is difficult; they are often uncomfortable and thus unappealing to use. They are also much more expensive than those available in other countries. As a result, we have chosen to continue to donate single-use products so that your donations can reach as many girls as possible, while remaining safe and, most importantly, hygienic. 

Please contact us if you would like to contribute directly to this initiative.

Planet

The planet aspect of our mission is underway. We are about 98% plastic free, having removed plastic all though our supply chain and order packaging. I am proud to say our shorts are completely plastic free. However, there are 2 small pieces of plastic related to the hats that need to be sorted out, these are the plastic 'kimble tags' used to attach our labels, and the stickers that we send out with all orders. These should be easy to sort and will not feature in future orders from our suppliers.

In regards to carbon, it’s a tough one to accurately track and manage. However, that is no excuse to not do as much as possible. We have recently moved all of our stock back to Kenya, where it will be stored and packaged. This means that all products will be shipped directly from Kenya, without adding additional air miles by transporting it to our warehouse located in the UK. We currently ship our products from Kenya using DHL, as they are able to provide us with data on the amount of carbon we are producing with each shipment.  This allows us to either work with them to offset this carbon, or use our own methods of offsetting the carbon. Sea freight providers aren't able to provide us with this level of accuracy to base our decisions off. Sea freight from Kenya is also notoriously unreliable, with shipments often getting lost. Having to recover shipments or remake lost products leads to much higher carbon outputs in the long run. As the business grows, we hope to be able to improve our carbon-offsetting efforts.

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