By Femi Stephen
The Chief Executive Officer of JTF Foundation, Jesutofunmi Fayemi, has said there is no official governmental policy on menstrual health and hygiene.
This she said recently at the Awareness Seminar on Menstrual Health and Hygiene for Ogun State Secondary School Girls.
Fayemi who was speaking at the event which held at Real Care Model College, Agbado, Ogun State, underscored the importance of knowing that the girl child is a unique being carefully crafted by God.
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“It is important to know that the girl child is a unique being carefully crafted by GOD filled with intricate details, delicate as that small piece at the tail end of jewelries yet a strong necessity to hold the entire jewelry together be it gold or bead.
” Few years ago; not so far from your age group then the realization hit me and ever since then, the love for my gender, teenage girls especially has no bounds.
“The need to educate the girl child at her developing yet most confusing stage spurred me into action that I volunteered to work with many NGOs and this passion drove me during Covid 19 lockdown to start my own NGO (JTF FOUNDATION) having come in contact with several teenage girls who were ignorant about their menstrual health and hygiene and still held on to myths and superstitions while infections and teenage pregnancies are still on the rise.
“JTF Foundation is a non-profit organization that was born in July 2020, because every teenage girl deserves to be educated about their Menstrual Health and Hygiene and should have access to adequate menstrual hygiene products corroborating the UN General Assembly declaration in 2010 that sanitation is a basic human right but unfortunately, there exists no official policy addressing citizens’ lack of access to menstrual hygiene products in Nigeria.
“Our main objective is to create awareness in the society by educating the teenage girls and distributing menstrual hygiene products to individuals that cannot afford them. Since the inception of the foundation in July 2020, we have educated and distributed sanitary items in some locations in Lagos state, in Osun State, we were at the school of students with special needs Osogbo and very recently having Ile Ife, Gbongan and Odeomu as our catchment towns, Gbongan hosted us for a whole day.
“Today we are expecting about 300 girls from some selected private and public schools in Ogun State.”
