Young Ayomide committed to ending period poverty

14-year-old Ayomide Ofure Akran is the founder of Pink Diva Organisation committed to ensuring better and safer recycling system for Nigeria and providing sustainable reusable pads for young girls of special needs and for young girls in rural areas.

The young change agent was one of the five youths below 21, identified by Global Network of Social Entrepreneurs, Ashoka during its national programme presentation held in Lagos.

The secondary school student and innovative change maker is dedicated to attaining sustainable environment and gender equality within Nigeria. Akran who founded her organization at age 11 located in her neighbourhood, Mainland Local council has co-workers and volunteers who are teenagers like herself.

As school children, they all put in a few hours during the week to strategise, plan and monitor production of the pads for the organisations upcoming events. With the help of Ayomide’s mother, she assists the teenagers in moving around selected rural communities distributing these pads to underserved girls, teaching them about personal and environmental hygiene and promoting their products to encourage children to get out of despondency and do something new to help themselves and their society.

For Ayomide her reason for going into the production of reusable low cost pads is having come to the realization of recurring trend of period poverty. “Some of my school mates and local communities I visited while volunteering spurred me. I believe that girls can be whoever they want to be without periods limiting them. Girls can rise to the top of the society by starting from humble beginnings even at a young age to be problem solvers. All that must happen is that a determined young girl must put her vision to work.

“She must get her ideas out of the mill. This means we must not surrender to the devil trying to spread hopelessness amongst us. Girls should not have to do unimaginable things just to buy pad every month. Some girls don’t want to be girls just because of period poverty “

At the programme presentation in Lagos recently Ashoka disclosed that the idea is to bring together young change makers to share ideas, make contacts and build relationships for programme advancement across communities. It also described the carefully selected young ones as youths who have found their feet in their communities and are leading a team and engaging their peers in producing goods and services, also promoting awareness for social and economic progress at local and national levels.

Akran added that she is excited to be selected for the international programme presentation where she was able to showcase her pet project. She sees a bright future ahead of her as she aspires to become a social worker.