I provide girls with reusable sanitary towels, Pad Heaven founder Florence Kamaitha

Pad Heaven seeks to educate girls on menses, good hygiene and womanhood

The ‘no blood should hold us back’ ad showcases some female athletes crushing a rugby game, a run, a mountain biking route, and a ballet routine, pushing through whatever scrapes, bumps and bruises they get along the way. The ad implied that if we can push through the pain during our workout, we shouldn’t need to worry about whether our tampon is going to leak. Bleeding once a month only makes us tough. It is the stigma around period blood that Florence Kamaitha, founder of Pad Heaven sought to overcome when she started her business, Pad Heaven.

Florence was in school and running a water branding business when a friend invited her to fundraise for desks for a school in Thika. “It was a mixed, public primary school. After we distributed the desks, the children went out to play and I noticed only a handful of girls at the school. I asked one teacher where the girls were, and she told me it was that time of the month.”