Our Team & Partners
Kibera Pad Co. Executive Team
Kibera Pad Co. has partnered with Jane Anyango, Kibera, Nairobi to operate a micro-factory and employ women who will make sanitary pads, provide education and empower young school age girls.
Jane Anyango
Founder/Director, Polycom Development Project
Jane Anyango is an urban, grassroots woman living and working in Kibera, the biggest slum settlement in Sub Saharan African based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Jane started organizing women from different communities over 15 years ago in response to cases of sexual manipulation and violence towards adolescent girls. She has mentored thousands of girls through her “GPende” slogan meaning, 'love yourself', currently a global woman amplifying the voices of women/girls living in slum communities locally, nationally and globally.
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Jane is the Founding Director of Polycom Development Project – she is the convener of the Kenyan Women led Urban Thinkers Campus - World Urban Campaign process towards The City We Need, Policy Unit Expert towards Habitat III, and has contributed to the successful lobby towards engender of the New Urban Agenda.
Jane has received the following global recognitions:
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Woman Peacemaker 2016
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Millennium Milestone Maker Awardee 2015
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Endorsed among 10 most influential Kenyan women to meet President Obama in October 2015
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Featured in Award Winning Documentary “I will not be silenced” 2014
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Outstanding Leadership Award 2011
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International Woman of Courage nominee 2011
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Community Peace Builder Award 2010.
Lois Harris
Founder / Director / Secretary Kibera Pad Co.
As a producer in documentary films over the last 30 years I have covered a broad variety of subjects both national and international encompassing material in both a political and social context.
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Whilst researching a documentary in Nairobi in 2013 I spent some time with a number of women living in Kibera Slum. One woman, Jane Anyango who runs a charity Polycom Development Project stood out as a strong, well informed leader.
In the time I spent with Jane I discovered only 50% of people are employed in Kibera, the average wage is US$1 per day and most families can’t afford sanitary pads. When dirt, leaves, rags and selling their bodies doesn’t work girls miss class and finally leave school. 65% of girls never finish their education.
I was stunned that this problem had never occurred to me and resolved to do something about it. In 2019 we installed our first pad making micro-factory in Kibera Slum.
I also learned that due to cultural taboos girls don’t receive information about sex or personal hygiene so Jane trained mentors and now girls are being taught not only how to use pads but also about personal hygiene, female sexuality and self worth.
Judy Rymer
Director, Kibera Pad Co.
Judy Rymer is an award winning film and television director/producer whose work has been commissioned by both local and international broadcasters. Her documentaries have screened at significant international festivals including Cannes, Chicago and New York and have also had a number of Australian Parliamentary screenings.
Judy's awards include Gold at the Chicago Film Festival, Best Film in Montreal and New York and best Documentary at the New Zealand Screen Awards. Her award winning documentaries include The Grass is Greener, Victory over Death, Cinema of Unease, Fifteen Minutes of Fire, Poles Apart, Message from Moree, Punished not Protected, All Points of he Compass, Being Chen Kaige, Frank & Daz Take on the World, Risking our Kids, I Will Not be Silenced and The Cancer Killers.
She continues to produce non-broadcast projects and is currently completing a seven year project financed by the top four Australian Banks.
Elizabeth Cranston
Director, Kibera Pad Co.
Elizabeth Cranston is a certified practicing accountant (CPA), chartered tax advisor and business consultant in Penrith NSW where I have my business Accounting with Class.
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Our services range from accounting and taxation services right up to complex structuring for asset protection and estate planning. We love start-up businesses and all of our accountants are fully qualified and great strategists.
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Although an accountant with my own practice, the practice that I am finding more valuable than ever, is that of contribution. It has become an important part of being in business and an important part of being successful. There is no greater joy than helping others to fully take advantage of the opportunities that life presents.
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This is one of the reasons that I participate in the Kibera Pad Co. project run by The LJA Foundation.
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I am one of three directors who are trying to help young girls in Kibera, Kenya to finish school by providing ways for the community to supply their young menstruating female students with sanitary pads.
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By setting up micro-factories where local women can earn a living making pads, and girls can receive free pads so that they can remain in school and finish their education, we are not only providing opportunity for these young women to find confidence, stability and security for their future, but we are also providing opportunity for the local women to find utility in their own lives.
A by-product of this project has been that these women have gone on to start small businesses of their own, which in turn helps grow and educate the community and their local economy.
Strategic Partnership Organisations
Amy Peake
Founder / Director, Loving Humanity
In 2014 Loving Humanity founder, Amy Peake, saw a photograph of Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, showing 18,000 people queuing for food. In the foreground was a woman and Amy was struck by a thought ‘How do women cope once a month in war zones?’
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Since 2015, Loving Humanity founder Amy Peake has travelled all over the world to meet with manufacturers, suppliers, industry experts and potential partners to bring to life her vision of providing sanitary pads to some of the poorest communities in the world, to restore dignity where it has been lost.
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In 2016 working alongside the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and with the Norwegian Refugee Council as partners, Loving Humanity opened its first sanitary pad micro-factory just south of the Syrian border in Zaatari Refugee camp in Jordan. They employed 30 of the most vulnerable women in the camp and this project became the first UNHCR protection program for women in the world.