Pledge a Pad campaign kicks off
Social Ills Eradication is a non-profit organisation that serves Ga-Mothapo village and surrounds and their current campaign aims to help girl children
Ga-Mothapo – Social Ills Eradication is a non-profit organisation which serves Ga-Mothapo village and surrounds.
Initially formed in 2013, the organisation aims to eradicate social related issues and challenges in the village, such as crime, the high unemployment rate, and school dropouts.
“We come from an area lacking in skills and access to information. This is why we want to work together to eradicate problems to make our communities better places to live in. Things such as as a lack of sanitary towels can destroy young people’s confidence, affect their education and social life, and often leads to them dropping out of school. The high unemployment rate in most households contributes to the lack of basic necessities,” said Hlagala Mothapo, one of the Social Ills Eradication members.
They will host a Periods Know No Poverty campaign on 22 July at the Ga-Mothapo Moshate sports ground to help raise awareness for their cause.
The event aims to collect sanitary towels to impoverished female learners in the Ga-Mothapo area, working with Pledge a Pad, a non-profit organisation which aims to provide sanitary towels to underprivileged young women.
“Sanitary towels are a basic necessity, we see condom tins offering free condoms in almost every public toilet we enter but yet there are no tins offering free sanitary towels, as if periods are a choice. We are working with Social Ills Eradication on their Periods Know No Poverty campaign and donated 1 000 sanitary towels. We pledge to keep doing so to keep girls in schools,” said Tsamaiso Mphaga, Head of Public Relations at Pledge a Pad.
“After we saw the effect of having no pads has on young girls, we decided to take it upon ourselves to step up and do something about the problem. We engaged with schools and asked if they experienced similar challenges and that’s how the idea of Periods Know No Poverty was born.
“We aim to be the driving force in uniting our community and surrounding areas on challenges they face. As the chairperson I strongly believe poverty and inequality are the result of a divided community and the solution for this is unity,” Mpepe Molewa, Social Ills Eradication Chairperson, said.
