We’ve mentioned Elizabeth Scharpf’s SHE (Sustainable Health Enterprises) at re:Cycling before. In 2009, Scharpf won the inaugural Harvard Business School Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship for her project helping local women in developing countries “jump-start their own businesses to manufacture and distribute affordable, quality, and eco-friendly sanitary pads.” This is a truly innovative program, combining microloans with the use of local raw materials (instead of imported materials) to ensure affordability and accessibility – quite different than Proctor & Gamble’s “Protecting Futures” campaign of a few years ago.
Scharpf is currently working in Rwanda, helping local women set up business making sanitary pads out of banana tree trunks. Using banana tree trunks – a part of the plant that is normally trashed – means more use is made of an existing cash crop while the expense of importing raw materials is eliminated.
A brief story about Scharpf and her work is featured in the February 2010 issue of Marie Claire magazine. I’m glad to see this project getting more publicity. (Story is not yet online, but you can view a PDF here.) The article is online here.
