For girls, the lack of private and functional toilets in school can mean more than an inconvenience. It can mean embarrassment during menstruation, difficulty maintaining personal hygiene and a school day shaped by anxiety rather than learning. Across underserved communities, inadequate sanitation, limited water access and menstrual-health stigma continue to undermine girls’ dignity and participation in education.
In Kenya, the numbers are grim. The Kenya Demographic and Health Survey (KDHS) states that up to 65% of girls in rural areas and 52% in urban areas lack these services. The domino effect on the girls’ education is equally huge, with almost one million school-age girls missing an average of 2-4 days of school each month due to menstruation-related challenges. Unfortunately, their mothers are not included in these findings.
Addressing these challenges requires more than distributing sanitary pads or telling these girls to practise good personal hygiene. They need functional facilities, relevant information and communities that support their wellbeing. They also need sanitation infrastructure, menstrual-health education, Social and Behaviour Change (SBC), peer leadership and talent development to help them protect their dignity and influence positive change, thus placing them on the path to realisation of their dreams.
Whilst Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASAL) regions are understood to be grappling with water and sanitation challenges, there are some counties whose collective case is purely a governance and leadership failure.
However, Kisumu, Kwale, Turkana, Kilifi, Tana River and Taita Taveta are some of the counties where girls and women face stigma and degraded personal hygiene issues due to water challenges, with particular attention to learners in Junior Secondary Schools (JSS).
Beyond Toilets and Sanitary Pads approach to resolving these challenges begins with need assessments and engagement with schools and communities. These activities help identify the practical barriers, knowledge gaps and social attitudes affecting girls’ wellbeing. The findings inform interventions that respond to actual conditions on the ground.
Behaviour-change messages cannot achieve their full purpose when learners lack the facilities needed to practise what they are taught. Field assessments have identified schools with inadequate and overcrowded sanitation facilities, limited privacy and poor conditions for menstrual hygiene management.
In some assessed settings, more than 200 learners per toilet stall. Therefore, there is a need to place greater emphasis on constructing and renovating school sanitation facilities while maintaining SBC, menstrual-health education and sustainable school-level WASH management.
Comprehensive school Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) requires functional facilities, water and handwashing where needed, menstrual-health support, appropriate sanitary-waste disposal, hygiene education and maintenance systems schools can sustain.
Girls should also be encouraged to begin with what they can influence in their own lives and surroundings, then extend that learning to others.
The girls should not be treated merely as beneficiaries. They should be encouraged to become peer educators, role models and advocates who carry positive messages into classrooms, homes and neighbourhoods. The ambition should endeavour to nurture leaders - young women who make informed choices, support one another and take responsibility for their communities. The process should move from need assessment to content development and dissemination.
Adolescence should be a time of discovery, learning and growing confidence. It is when girls begin to understand themselves, develop their identities and imagine the women they may become. Yet, for many girls growing up in underserved communities, this stage of life comes with challenges that can affect their health, education, safety and sense of self-worth.
As thousands of candidates sit for various exams across Kenya, the experiences of adolescent girls differ from one community to another. In some places, the struggle performs well and shape the next course of their lives; it is dependent on access to basic services. In others, it is the silence surrounding menstruation, limited access to reproductive-health information, harmful social expectations or exposure to abuse and exploitation that form the jaundiced foundation that leads to failure and a wasted future.
Often, several of these challenges overlap. In Turkana, where some communities face difficult living conditions and limited access to basic services, a girl may have to navigate school with inadequate sanitation facilities and few private spaces to manage her period. A toilet without a door, a broken lock or a lack of water and soap can turn an ordinary school day into an experience of anxiety and embarrassment.
For a girl who is menstruating, privacy is not a luxury; it is part of being able to participate in school with dignity. In parts of Kisumu, overcrowded sanitation facilities and inadequate privacy can present similar difficulties. Girls need more than a place to relieve themselves. They need clean, usable facilities, reliable access to water and appropriate menstrual-health support.
They also need accurate information about their changing bodies and the confidence to seek help without fear of ridicule or judgement.
