Empower Girls in Uganda with Menstrual Health

This project report is a submission to GlobalGiving's 2017 Fail Forward Contest, where organizations are asked to share a story of when they tried something new that didn't go as planned and how they learned from it. Enjoy!

 If at first you don’t succeed, grab some coffee and crunch those numbers! Well, that’s what we did anyway. In 2014, Days for Girls Uganda put on its very first “Kit Business” training. The idea was simple: provide a small group of women with basic training and initial resources, and watch their business grow! In the course of 4 days, a women’s cooperative was to be trained in Ambassador of Women’s Health, how to make the DfG Kit, how to make liquid soap, and basic business skills. This, we thought, would position them to launch their own small business making & selling DfG Kits, along with health education. As it turns out, DfG Kit quality takes some practice, and business acumen is more than just an income & expenses table.

The small DfG Uganda team was so excited after completing the first few Kit Business trainings. It’s working, we thought! The ladies seem so excited; they get it! And, they did…. Until they didn’t. Because Days for Girls is committed to follow up, and utilizing our supply chain of high quality materials to ensure a long-standing relationship & proper DfG Kit quality, we were able to stay in close contact with the 10 groups trained from 2014 – 2015 with the Kit Business program. And it was through these follow ups that we learned things weren’t going quite as we had pictured. The DfG Kit quality was questionable in some cases, ladies were struggling to make sales in most cases, and group dynamics presented unexpected challenges for a few.

Disappointed? Yes. Discouraged? Not so much! You see, from day one, DfG has had a culture of “failing forward”, or learning from our mistakes, and proactively seeking the wisdom of those we serve. The DfG Kit design itself went through 27 iterations before landing on its final form, because girls & women around the globe told us what worked, and what didn’t – and we listened.

 So, a small team of our DfG Uganda and international leadership huddled together (some in person, armed with coffee and chocolate, and some virtually), and we went through the numbers – sales, production, supply chain. And we went through the curriculum. And we went through the communications. And we went through the logic model. The Uganda Center had proved that production & local sales could work, and we were not ready to give up on the ladies we had already trained – or the many more who hoped to one day be trained.

Through intensive analysis of our own approach, and research on best practices from other leading organizations, we devised a solution. Thus we saw the birth of our Micro-Enterprise program, through the DfG University Training program. This two-week intensive program combined our flagship Ambassador of Women’s Health training with tailored entrepreneurship training and hands-on DfG Kit making training.

 We launched the first iteration of this revamped program in April 2015 with a class from Democratic Republic of Congo. Today, these women are still actively making and selling DfG Kits and have trained thousands in the Kivu province of DRC. We also made our training program available online and through print outs, to meet the needs of women across the world. Today, we have 69 certified Micro-Enterprises, and over 180 emerging Micro-Enterprises (meaning they’re working through the process of training). And those 10 groups that we initially trained? 6 of them have come back for additional support training because they were so passionate about continuing their projects despite the initial hiccups!

 Failing forward is vital not just for our growth as an organization, but for the future of those we serve. Because - when you’re dealing with dignity, health, and rights - failure is not an option!