Karo Omu is passionate about people and communication. It’s interesting that she has found herself in a marketing career path and actively involved in social issues. Due to amazing support from family and friends offline and online she founded two organizations, Foundation for the Eradication of Child Labour and the Sanitary Aid Initiative.
One of the organizations focuses on taking kids working on the streets into school with the permission of their parents and the other aims to provide sanitary hygiene education and materials to girls from low income homes. Both of these organizations are a huge part of her life but she manages to find time to eat eba and okro, support Manchester United and suck at yoga.
The success of our organization can simply be attributed to people. The people who work tirelessly for the organisation, those who see opportunities and send them our way and most importantly, the people who are always happy to benefit from our work. Without these people, there will be no us.
Our initiative’s main goal is to address the needs of 65% of the Nigerian female population who do not have access to sanitary pads. This can only be done through female health advocacy — getting the Government to cater for young girls in the country by giving them sanitary pads for free or at a large discount, even to the point where the organization becomes redundant.
In 2017, I observed that the recession had increased the price of women’s sanitary products by 100%. The increased cost of purchasing pads led me to think about the less privileged girls in the society. So at the time, I sent out a tweet asking for help and it built momentum.
So far, our team has been able to reach 11,000 girls and counting and they are happy that people remember them. More importantly, they are happy to learn. For some of them, the packs of pads we hand them are the first they have owned.
Weʼve had challenges with getting permissions for outreaches in some schools or IDP communities and also, the issue of funding. We have continued and will continue to find better ways to achieve our goals and make the country a better place for women.
Women empowerment is necessary to move the world forward.
Itʼs not just in ensuring that women are able to support themselves but also ensuring that they have the tools to occupy more leadership positions.
Many factors hold girls back such as child marriage, FGM, lack of access to education or the de-prioritising of the education of the girl child, lack of access to sanitary hygiene products and much more.
Women empowerment requires deliberate and sustainable actions to bring girls up as equals who can see through representation that they can occupy spaces that were formerly impossible.
Our friends, donors and potential donors can help by donating to :
Sanitary Aid Initiative
Access Bank: 0773917860
They can also visit our website: www.sanitaryaidng.com
