Help Kozo Girls to Scale
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This video shows Kozo Girls pitching at Turner Studios in Atlanta on 27th February 2019, where we were finalists in the CARE Scale by Design business accelerator competition. Although we won the People's Choice, we narrowly missed winning the cash prize, and that same evening we decided to launch a kickstarter campaign to try and raise the money this way instead! The story below is a summary of the pitch in the video. Thank you for watching/reading/supporting us!
We want to convince you to support our social enterprise, Kozo Girls, a group of young Zambian women making reusable menstrual pads. Our research shows that 20% of girls in Zambia miss an average of 3 school days every month while menstruating due to lack of products.
The social impact of Kozo Girls is two-fold. Firstly, Kozo Girls gives skills training and livelihood opportunities to young women, and secondly we aim to provide Kozo Pads free of charge to as many schoolgirls in Zambia as possible. Our vision is a Zambia where no girl should miss school just because she is a girl.
We have sold over 4000 pads to date. But we want to do much more.
Our model is to sell in bulk to service providers, who distribute free of charge to end-users. This market includes over 350 NGOs working on girls’ education and WASH, and the government, who have pledged publicly to support schoolgirls with pads. Currently, many of these groups distribute disposable pads, more expensive for them, and less impactful for the girls they are trying to help, who only get a month’s supply of pads. Those groups that are buying reusable pads usually import them from other countries.
There are opportunities for Kozo Girls within reach, and we need your help to scale up and win these contracts. Right now a UN agency in Zambia needs a supplier of 36,000 reusable pads per year. With $20,000 of investment, we can increase our woman power and double our production capacity from 500 to 1000 pads per day. We would then stand a good chance of winning this, and other contracts like it.
The Kozo Girls are employed to make an essential consumer product needed by other girls and women in Zambia today and every day, forever! In a country where young women are the most vulnerable group to new HIV infections due to poverty, and where at least a fifth of girls miss school while on their period, the social return on investment in Kozo Girls is significant, we have a viable plan, and a market ready for our product.
We want to convince you to support our social enterprise, Kozo Girls, a group of young Zambian women making reusable menstrual pads. Our research shows that 20% of girls in Zambia miss an average of 3 school days every month while menstruating due to lack of products.
The social impact of Kozo Girls is two-fold. Firstly, Kozo Girls gives skills training and livelihood opportunities to young women, and secondly we aim to provide Kozo Pads free of charge to as many schoolgirls in Zambia as possible. Our vision is a Zambia where no girl should miss school just because she is a girl.
We have sold over 4000 pads to date. But we want to do much more.
Our model is to sell in bulk to service providers, who distribute free of charge to end-users. This market includes over 350 NGOs working on girls’ education and WASH, and the government, who have pledged publicly to support schoolgirls with pads. Currently, many of these groups distribute disposable pads, more expensive for them, and less impactful for the girls they are trying to help, who only get a month’s supply of pads. Those groups that are buying reusable pads usually import them from other countries.
There are opportunities for Kozo Girls within reach, and we need your help to scale up and win these contracts. Right now a UN agency in Zambia needs a supplier of 36,000 reusable pads per year. With $20,000 of investment, we can increase our woman power and double our production capacity from 500 to 1000 pads per day. We would then stand a good chance of winning this, and other contracts like it.
The Kozo Girls are employed to make an essential consumer product needed by other girls and women in Zambia today and every day, forever! In a country where young women are the most vulnerable group to new HIV infections due to poverty, and where at least a fifth of girls miss school while on their period, the social return on investment in Kozo Girls is significant, we have a viable plan, and a market ready for our product.
Organiser and beneficiary
Emily Bell
Organiser
Washington D.C., DC
Sarah Padre
Beneficiary
