There were a lot of good ideas, but one team caught my eye: Korema. They're working on a way to cut the cost of sanitary pads by about 75% by using local materials and an "integrated" manufacturing process. They hope to have local women buy their machines and start local businesses supplying the pads. I'm a bit skeptical that women would be willing to buy pads for 8 cents each, but it's probably worth a shot. One of the problems with development (and businesses) is that we don't experiment enough.
I like this project a lot. The goal of generating employment and satisfying a basic hygenic need are cause enough for this project--which is why I was surprised Komera felt obliged to argue "[w]omen in Rwanda miss up to 50 days of school . . . due to lack of access [to pads]." Development practitioners have been peddling this theory for years, but skeptics have questioned the presumption along the way:
Yet skeptics abound. Esther Duflo, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, says that absentee rates are the same for boys and girls in much of Africa, and that programs like providing free uniforms and books seem to increase attendance. “What’s keeping children from school is the costs of attending,” she said.
Rebecca Thorton and Emily Oster recently did an experiment to settle the debate and found sanitary pads had no effect on improving school attendance. Komera should shift its marketing focus to the value of the pads themselves--the fact that people will buy them is evidence enough of their intrinsic worth.
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