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About us

ABOUT US

The EME Foundation is a volunteer-run nonprofit committed to eradicating period poverty by increasing access to period products for disadvantaged females and comprehensive and positive menstrual education for everyone, including boys.

We are located in Ondo, Lagos, Ibadan and Abuja.

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OUR STORY

Our founder’s childhood experience inspired The EME Foundation. Growing up in the conservative town of Ondo in southwest Nigeria, Motunrayo had overheard a conversation between two adults who said getting a period during early adolescence meant a girl was wayward. Even though this conversation was before her menarche, she internalised it. And it became the basis of a long history of period shame for her so that when she got her menarche in her early adolescence, she hid it from everyone, including her mum, to avoid negative social perceptions. This also made getting period products embarrassing for her. She would conceal them in a black bag to avoid embarrassment. This continued for a long time and did not stop there.

Approximately two years after her menarche, she tried to visit a local worship centre. She was, however, denied access to the auditorium because she was on her period and thus considered dirty to enter the ‘holy place.’

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Motunrayo’s experience remains a shared reality of girls and women in her community, where period taboos are endemic. In addition to not being allowed into a place of worship, women of certain religious beliefs are also required to visit a priest to be cleansed with ‘cleansing water’ after every cycle because their periods are believed to make them impure. Some women and girls are outrightly barred from praying or cooking for their families. While Motunrayo was privileged to be able to afford period products, a significant number of girls in this community, where poverty is widespread, could not afford them, compounding existing social stigma.

Now living in the United Kingdom, Motunrayo had informally fought for an end to menstrual discrimination but was more actively involved in another community project. For the community project, reaching out to girls with period products to commemorate Menstrual Hygiene Day was next on the agenda. When inquiring about the price of period products, she discovered that they now cost triple what they used to cost when she was back home. Having lived most of her life in Ondo, she wondered how the struggle to buy these products would have worsened for young girls who have no source of income especially. Upon research, she discovered this was true not just for girls in her community but across Nigeria. The situation has become terrible to the point that 80% of secondary school girls in Nigeria now have to choose between their periods and attending school.

Therefore, she knew the project could not be a ‘one-off- thing’ and that it was time to transform her passion for period equity into action and end a bad social practice that she was once a victim of. Hence, an outreach on May 25 2022, marked the beginning of a movement against period poverty in all its forms.