FLANNEL. A key ingredient to gender equality?
In this blog entry, we set out to introduce Aid Pioneers’ gender equality sector’s four pillars and explore the central role flannel plays in Aid Pioneers’ project sphere. Our work on gender equality and period poverty depends on our partner CBO’s access to flannel, exemplifying our first pillar of flannel procurement. Our second pillar, the scaling of CBOs, subsequently addresses the issues organizations might face concerning cost-cutting, supply chain and sales. Facilitating the development of new sewing sites should our partners express the wish to produce kits locally, as well as the organization of educational workshops attempting to fight stigmata on menstruation, is represented in our third and fourth pillars. Aid Pioneers and Uman Tok have together expanded Uman Tok’s production capacity to 200,000 menstrual health kits annually. Let’s explore the challenges we faced and how this success is realized through the procurement of flannel and our other pillars!
A quick round of flannel facts: what are the benefits of the fabric, how is it used in our context, and why is flannel procurement in Africa so tricky?
Flannel is mainly generated from cotton as a base material and whether through our daily clothes, bed sheets or cosy sleepwear, we all own at least one item made from this omnipresent fabric. Flannels' quality of increasing its softness with each wash and the fabric’s ability of easily absorbing most liquids explains its value for our work. Aid Pioneers has placed menstrual health and period poverty at the heart of its gender equality quest, fighting cycles of inequity enforced by girls' lack of access to sanitary products, causing them to miss school or work regularly.
Societal taboos around menstruation further represent a crucial angle in our work towards period tolerance. Imagine isolating yourselves in tents once a month for a week because you do not have the resources to manage your periods, and bleeding is seen as unclean and stigmatized. Thus, since 2021 we have partnered with the Sierra Leonean organization Uman Tok, which employs local tailors to produce reusable menstrual kits made from flannel. The kits last for up to three years and include several cloth pads that can be replaced and washed with an included bar of soap. However, Uman Tok's role is broader than its function as a local producer. Through hosting workshops, Uman Tok de-stigmatizes menstruation, breaking down engrained taboos and introducing new possibilities for understanding.
An aspect hindering the work of organizations like Uman Tok is the need for flannel refinement sites in Africa and the resulting difficulty in flannel procurement, which is essential for the menstrual kits. Even though West Africa is the continent's leading region concerning cotton production, the fabric’s manufacturing, and thus the production of the base material of flannel, mostly takes place in other places. Low prices, lack of instruments and expertise further hinder production. This leads to the absurd reality of African regions having to purchase a material they can produce themselves. Flannel generally must be shipped in from Asia and is not widely accessible for organizations like Uman Tok. Buying up flannel stocks on weekly markets is often the only way to ensure the menstrual kits' production and logically halts the process of making them widely accessible not only regionally but nationally. Let's explore how Aid Pioneers faces these challenges!
But how do we, Aid Pioneers, impact the gender equality space and the fight against period poverty?
Cotton Flannel accounts for ca. 40% of the menstrual health kits’ production costs (including labour costs). Reducing the costs of flannel procurement, therefore, provides the greatest leverage. As one kit can be used for up to three years, equivalent to ca. 36 menstrual cycles, Aid Pioneers’ impact also lasts.
More specifically, flannel procurement and supply chain support is one of the areas where we step in. Aid Pioneers acts as a mediator when establishing connections with sellers of processed flannel and organizes the supply chain logistics. For example, we secured 2.3 tons of flannel for Uman Tok through the Dutch textile manufacturer Burtex. The flannel was transported to Freetown with the support of Brussels Airlines. With this flannel, 12,600 menstrual kits for girls and women can be sewn locally. Our overall goal is shipping flannel to our partners in the short term, sourcing it collectively for them in the medium term, and finally helping establish flannel production sites in African countries. This kind of work plays to Aid Pioneers strengths by allowing us to support our CBO partners through our logistics network and towards reaching large numbers of women in need.
Our role further extends to sales strategy consulting. We offer to help partner CBOs find efficiencies and streamline processes. With each CBO already having a robust system in place, consulting can help super-charge their impact. More importantly, it allows for cooperation with our partners at eye level, which we deem more sustainable than writing checks. In practice, we scale existing CBOs and assist in their financial sustainability. In the short term, we consult our partners to make business-oriented decisions relating to cost-cutting, sales practices, etc. In the medium term, we intend to help partners to scale up by providing venture loans, risk underwriting and large-scale flannel shipments. Partnering up with companies in a buy one for yourself, buy one for a woman in Africa approach is also a suggestion.
Fixed Capital Investments represent the third pillar in our fight for gender equality and against African period poverty. As buyers for health kits ramp up, production capacity needs to grow with it. Here, Aid Pioneers turns to capital investments. With our partners, we assess what input suits the organization's strategy best and work towards matching their needs. For example, Uman Tok identified sewing machines as a crucial but scarce resource. We found a partner organization near Hamburg which restores old sewing machines, resulting in the recent procurement and transportation of 27 additional sewing machines for Uman Tok. This enabled Uman Tok to produce up to 200,000 menstrual health kits annually.
Let's assess what's possible and look at Aid Pioneers’ long-term intentions!
Throughout our partnership, Aid Pioneers has helped Uman Tok scale up their production, secure materials, and increase their capacity sixfold. In the short term, we intend to further test our current approach through our cooperation with Planning for Tomorrow (P4T) and identify areas in need of reusable menstrual health kits, subsequently helping our partners to enter these "markets". Our long-term goal can be identified as building menstrual health sewing sites across Africa. By establishing strategic partnerships with organizations seeking to develop sewing sites and putting our pillars of supply chain support and sales strategy consulting into practice, we hope to move closer to these overall goals. Through scaling CBOs, producing menstrual kits, and organizing workshops to accompany Kits, we aim to support four NGOs by July 2023 and between nine to fourteen by the end of 2023.
We have drawn on the following sources to write this blog entry:
https://www.umantok.com/about, https://www.unicef.org/mena/stories/making-period-stigma-history, https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/app/index.html#/app/downloads,
https://unctad.org/news/unlocking-hidden-value-cotton-products-african-least-developed-countries,