BirQe: Stops Girls from Dropping Out

Across Ethiopia and many other countries, girls drop out of school for a reason that sounds small but has life-changing consequences: toilets.

UNESCO estimates that girls can miss up to 100 days of school each year during their period when schools lack safe toilets and water. UNICEF reports that even when toilets exist, they may be missing a door, a lock, or running water. For boys, these toilets are usable. For girls, they are not.

The result is predictable. A girl misses too many days, falls behind, and cannot pass her grade. At the very age when she should be imagining her future, she is forced to drop out. Many end up in early marriage or migrate to cities, where they join the informal labor market as invisible workers. At home, she is expected to fetch water, cook, and carry endless chores.

Her education ends, not because she lacked ability, but because her basic needs were ignored. As Caroline Criado Perez explains in Invisible Women, when women’s needs are left out of design, their lives are erased from data and from opportunity.

This is why BirQe was created. BirQe is a dignity kit that includes reusable pads, underwear, soap, and a collapsible bucket that doubles for storage and water. It is simple, practical, and designed with girls’ lives in mind. Birqe helps keep girls in school by making sure a period does not mean 100 days of absence.

A toilet with a door. A bucket with pads. These are not luxuries. 

They are tools of dignity and justice. 

Birqe is more than a kit, 

it is a reminder that no girl should be invisible because of her period.