More than thirty young women with disabilities at the South West Gauteng Technical and Vocational Education Training (TVET) Roodepoort Campus will receive sanitary towels from the Gauteng Department of Social Development for the next four months.
This is initiative to provide sanitary towels to these students as part of Girl Child Campaign spearheaded by the Directorate Youth and Disability Mainstream (GYDM) of the department in partnership with Dyslexia networks, Standard Bank Diversity Division and Disability Support Services.
According to GYDM, Deputy Director, Eve Machabi, "The event was about pillar one of the Girl-Child campaign: promoting education and skill for young women. The event attracted student with disabilities and those without disabilities". Machabi added that despite these students being at tertiary there are those who were struggling to get sanitary towels.
They were encouraged to continue pursuing their education no matter the obstacles. Standard Bank indicated that they are in partnership with Harambee regarding learnerships to assist them.
Various issues were addressed such as gender-based violence and being self-reliant.
"As a department of Gauteng Social Development will hold hands with other stakeholders to support our children to become better citizens. We need to work together with the community to fight the scourge of GBV" she said.
The initiative has been welcomed by students, one of the students said some of their peers were struggling to get sanitary towels. "These include especially those who are not dependent on their boyfriends and come from disadvantaged families," she said.