This good question was asked in a podcast interview I recently had. Why am I so driven? Why do I freak out when I think about the over 7 million menstruating people in South Africa who do not have access to menstruation products? When I think about the women in Nepal who are forced to stay in little huts outside the village during their menstruation, as they are considered to be dirty? When I think of all the young girls who can't go to school because of their menstruation?
I guess it is about the inequality. I saw during my last years of traveling around the world, visiting places like India, Nepal, Tibet and so on. It is about the picture that has stuck in my head since I've been in South Africa recently: Townships on one side of the street, while on the other side, there is the most fancy gated security you could ever think about.
Inequality is something that drives me (crazy). Inequality is something I want to use my privilege for to make a change. Reflecting on inequality connected me with amazing people like. Seeing with my own eyes how inequality is one of the biggest problems in this world, makes me want to work even more and even harder to really make a difference.
When last year I was sitting in front of boxes full of wrongly sewn nookees, which meant not being able to sell anything for a while, I asked myself a very important and very deep question: What is my company, and who am I as the founder, if there is no product in stock? What do I stand for? What is my purpose? What makes me want to think about my business day and night?
Period poverty is one of the most unequal things in the world: People get discriminated against due to their menstruation.
Something half of the population gets during their lifetime, something all of the population needed to actually get here to this planet. No menstruation = no human life. It is pretty simple like this. But unfortunately, it is pretty disgustingly used against the people who are having it.
500 million people do not have access to menstruation products, education about the topic and/ or sanitary facilities. 500 million people out of 800 million people who menstruate (at any given time at any given place on earth).
So the question goes back: How could I not be driven by this topic? How could I ignore what is going on, while just selling my product to women who can afford it?
