PadMad – Upcycling Textiles for Menstrual Health & Girl’s Education
This crisis leads to girls missing school and exams, forces them to improvise pads with unhygienic materials, and leaves them exposed to be taken advantage of.
How can a reusable pad company address education, employment, and environmental waste simultaneously?
In this episode, Madhvi Dalal, founder of PadMad, talks about why and how she built a social enterprise to tackle period poverty in Kenya, a country where 65% of women and girls cannot afford menstrual products. This crisis leads to girls missing school and exams, forces them to improvise pads with unhygienic materials, and leaves them exposed to be taken advantage of.
Madhvi walks us through PadMad’s three-pillar focus: education, running workshops in schools and workplaces to break stigma and provide information. Empowerment, employing marginalised women to manufacture the pads. And environment, creating reusable pads from textile waste to reduce plastic pollution.
You’ll also hear how this model has scaled to impact over 150,000 people and prevented millions of disposable pads from polluting Kenya’s environment.
People
Madhvi Dalal, at PadMad
https://www.linkedin.com/in/madhvi-dalal-b61a1a180/
Patrick Hypscher, Circular Business Strategist, PaaS Expert
https://www.linkedin.com/in/hypscher/
Chapters
00:00 Introduction
03:04 Period Poverty in Kenya
05:48 Start of PadMad
08:40 The Evolution of PadMAT’s Approach
13:47 Impact and Reach of PadMad
17:22 Funding and Financial Model of PadMad
21:37 Partnerships and Future Aspirations
About
PadMad is a Kenya-based social enterprise addressing period poverty through biodegradable, reusable menstrual pads, coupled with menstrual health education and training/employment for marginalised women. The pads are designed for multi-year use to reduce waste and cost barriers, with impact tracking emphasising disposables diverted and school attendance benefits. PadMad’s approach combines product provision with train-the-trainer outreach and partnerships. Independent write-ups list PadMad among Kenya’s eco-friendly period solutions.