On International Women’s Day CA nonprofit has helped 100,000 girls stay in school

Girls near Nairobi

Ugandan recipient

Sample Save a Girl ™ kit

Menstrual hygiene kits help them manage their period

We can double the total available human potential, for $2 per girl per year. Is that worth it? It might be the highest return on human investment in the world.”

— Brenda Birrell

LIVERMORE, CA, UNITED STATES, March 7, 2025 /EINPresswire.com/ -- The Global Uplift Project (TGUP) just announced distribution of its 100,000th Save a Girl ™ kit, helping 100,000 developing world girls manage their period so they can stay in school.

The nonprofit believes this might be a

path to doubling the total available human potential.

Save a Girl ™ (SaG) is a set of washable, reusable sanitary pads that TGUP makes and donates to adolescent girls in nine developing world countries. The kits cost $7 to make and are given free of charge to recipient girls.

According to Brenda Birrell, inventor of Save a Girl ™, “Girls dropping out of school because they cannot manage their period is the greatest preventable human tragedy in the world.”

UNICEF estimates that more than 20 million girls drop out of school every year because they cannot manage their period. The number might be as high as 50 million.

The tragedy is two-fold. First, the girls are not able to realize their human potential, which they desire and the world needs. Second, the fix to prevent this is simple, proven, and inexpensive.

According to the World Bank, better educated girls exhibit a wide array of socially-beneficial behaviors. Specifically, they:

• Defer sex longer
• Have fewer partners
• Are more likely to use birth control
• Defer marriage longer
• Marry higher income-earning spouses
• Have fewer children
• See that those children are better educated
• Have better vocational options
• Contribute more to their communities

Said TGUP’s Birrell, “A better educated girl is almost the most valuable asset a society can produce. Save a Girl ™ helps them do that.”

A SaG kit lasts for 3-5 years. The kits are made in sewing centers TGUP operates in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Cameroon, and Nepal. The nonprofit expects to be opening a new center, soon, in India. The centers employ local seamstresses who earn on average 40% more than the national minimum wages.

TGUP has conducted research on the impacts of the Save a Girl ™ kits on girls’ performance in high school. The research was conducted in Kenya, where TGUP has donated more than 50,000 SaG kits.

For girls who used a Save a Girl ™ kit for more than one year:

• Total days of school missed fell by more than 93%.
• Average Grade Point Average (GPA) for girls rose by 16.65%.
• Average national test scores rose 20.7% for girls; 7.3% for boys.
• Total number of pregnancies fell by 93%.
• Graduation rates for girls went up from 85% to 96%.

Because of these outcomes, TGUP believes Save a Girl ™ is one of the most powerful ways to improve the human condition. Improvements occur by getting educated that half of the human race that is not, now, fully educated: the female half.

According to Birrell, “We can double the total available human potential, for $2 per girl per year. Is that worth it? It might be the highest return on human investment in the world.”

The Global Uplift Project builds small-scale educational infrastructure projects in the developing world. Since its founding, in 2007, it has completed more than 500 such projects in 26 developing world countries. Over their duration, those projects will help more than 3.2 million of the poorest people in the world have a better chance in life.