OUR STORY
Every menstruator knows this moment.
You are in a bathroom, caught out, and you wait until someone else walks in. “Any chance you've got a pad or a tampon?”
And she says “of course, yes, here.”
Nobody hesitates. Nobody asks questions. It is one of the most universal experiences in the world.
The Cova Project is that, at a slightly bigger scale. $25 rather than one tampon. Ten years of period care rather than one afternoon. The same instinct, and the same answer. “Of course. Here you go.”
Access. Education. Dignity.
That is our inspiration. This is our story.
Losing your education
In year ten I got sick and I didn't finish school. I never went to university.
Losing my education was multifaceted. It wasn't just the feeling of losing my future. It was the feeling of losing my self-worth, and knowing that I would be seen as somebody who is less than. So if I could stop a girl from feeling that, with something as small and simple as a cup, that seems like something worth dedicating my life to.
Namibia and learning the problem
In 2015 I was twenty one, working for a wildlife conservation NGO in rural Namibia on roughly 63 cents an hour. A blissfully ignorant, middle class white girl from Sydney, living out her dream in a country that wasn't hers.
Two things I saw there changed me.
The first was pads sold as singles in the small shops. Not packets. Singles. Because a single was what a woman could afford that month.
The second took me longer to understand. Women I worked alongside, women on an NGO salary, were engaging in transactional sex at rural hospitals to get period products. It made no sense to me until it did. Women reinvest around 90% of their income into their families and their communities. Men reinvest about 35%. So when the choice is a month of period products for yourself or food on the table for your family, it stops being a choice. Women choose the family. They always choose the family.
None of that was caused by a shortage of products. The products existed. They were on a shelf. It was simply a lack of access.
We backed someone else first
The Cova Project did not begin with a project of our own. It began with 2,500 cups sent to mobile clinics in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, to support people who were already doing this work and doing it well.
Then founder Geena Dunne went out across her network and asked one question. Is anyone working in a community where you think this would actually help?
Two communities said yes.
Liberia, where we work in West Point, the largest slum in the country, densely populated and built on a sandbank overlooking the Atlantic Ocean.
And Malawi, in a small village behind Mzuzu University, where a mother and daughter, Betti and Eluby, were already hosting health sessions for the women in their village out of nothing but the goodness of their hearts.
That is the method and it has not changed. We never go anywhere we're not invited.
Humility and listening
When we moved into Uganda we started in Kampala, and we got our lesson quickly. In the capital, women were not especially interested in the cup. Their options were not good, but they had options.
So we went to Nakivale Refugee Settlement, and we went there against our own assumptions. We had quietly written refugee settlements off as viable locations. Not enough water, we thought. Too hard.
Initially, women weren't sure about the cups, they decided they were a foreign solution and put them on their shelves. Then a few months of no access to anything went by, and they tried them.
A cup needs barely any water. In Nakivale it wasn't a compromise, it was the best thing available by a distance, and the women there didn't just accept it. They cherished it.
The place we assumed was too hard turned out to be where the need was greatest. We have tried to remember that every time we have felt certain about something since.
Invest in the individual
Our secret sauce is quite often our project leaders. Exceptional individuals who are driven by the same heart and commitment to solving this issue as we are.
Gabriella Amini was a project leader on our first project in Nakivale. She embraced the work with two hands and never let go of it. She is the reason women in that settlement understood the cup, trusted it and then wanted it.
When Gabi went on to build her own organisation, We Empower Her, we went with her. We did not stay with the organisation. We stayed with the person who lived the work. We Empower Her is now one of our two strongholds in Uganda.
Gabriella's belief is simple and urgent.
“A girl who can manage her period properly and understand her rights is less vulnerable to exploitation. That's why we must all stand and care for the wellbeing of girls in vulnerable communities.”
Gabriella Amini, We Empower Her
We're a family
It has happened often enough now that we have stopped calling it a coincidence. Gabi is not the exception here, she is the pattern.
Abena Benewaa Fosu came to us as a hired project leader on our first project in Ghana with the Yevu Foundation. She now leads our work in Ghana through her own organisation, Yebetumi.
In Liberia we started with three young women from the community working as field agents, under a strong hierarchical structure. Together, we flattened it. Euodia, Genevieve and Karolyn are now our project leads and co creators of the work, and they build the programming rather than deliver someone else's.
A partner is not someone we fund. A partner is a co owner with real decision making power. Most of the people here arrived in a job and stayed as a true partner.
Shared learnings, one team
Abena spent years in Liberia, mentoring that team and helping get the programme into shape. Ghana helping Liberia, shared learnings and training across West Africa.
In Uganda, the Irise Institute East Africa team became trainers of trainers, building a seedbank of small organisations, each one trained, each one given an allocation of cups, each one ready for the day we can go bigger.
And in Jinja we work inside the system that already exists. The district education officer helps choose the government schools we go into. Local government and the WASH officers point us towards the schools with no other options. We are not building a second structure alongside the one that is already there. We are resourcing the one that needs a little extra support.
The standard is the same everywhere. Everything else, the language, the approach, the cultural detail, is built by the people who live there.
Every year we gather all of our Ugandan partners and bring them together for a one week workshop. They share learnings and experiences, and they train in each other's backyards, so everyone can get better together and work together as a true coalition.
Many of these organisations now work together on separate projects without The Cova Project. Which is the truest mark of our coalition and teamwork.
Where we work
The dream is independence
Betti, Eluby and Casey built The Cova Project Malawi together. Then they built it into something that did not need us.
It became CARVE Africa. Successful, independent, its own funding, its own name, its own standing as a regional leader in Malawi. Our first self sufficient partner.
That's the dream for all of our partners.
Australia showed us a different problem
We piloted in Australia with the Taboo Foundation expecting a smaller version of the problem we already knew. That is not what we found.
In Australia, if you are resourceful enough, you can usually get hold of products. (We still think that if toilet paper is in every public bathroom, period products should be too.) What stopped us was the education. It was on par with countries we work in across Africa.
So we partnered with the Taboo Foundation and people like Eva Jakob at The Menstrual Code, training the frontline workers who meet women experiencing domestic violence, young people at risk and people who are unhoused. So that when someone in front of them has a question about her own body, the answer she gets is accurate. And so she can be handed a cup that settles the product question for the next ten years, whatever happens to her circumstances in between.
We learnt who we are
Once the projects were stable, we had to be honest about what we were actually for.
We are a resourcing partner. Our partners lead because they best understand their communities. We bring cups, training, materials, funding and support. As local ownership grows, we turn down our microphone and turn up theirs.
We gave the stages names so we can be held to them. Roots. Rise. Coalition. Self Sufficient. Most of our partners sit at coalition, which means we make decisions together and we co own the work. The entire point is to keep moving towards the last one.
- Roots
- Rise
- Coalition
- Self Sufficient
The promises we make to our team
Every person who joins The Cova Project is given these in writing on their first day. They are not website values. They are the promises we make to the people who actually do this work, and they are the reason the four stages above are more than a diagram.
- You can trust us to take care of you.
- We are one team.
- Everyone has a great idea.
- You can speak directly.
- A quick no is a good thing.
- Ownership is yours.
- Equal dignity.
We are publishing them here because a promise you can read is a promise you can hold us to.
One product for all
We went out to tender to find the right cup. Instead we found Diana Lidforsen at FlowCup, who told us she cared about “impact over profits” and would match the lowest price we could find anywhere. We have worked with FlowCup since day one. We check the market constantly. The answer keeps coming back the same. There isn't a better cup.
Whatever cup our team uses, whatever cup our board uses, that is the cup a girl in West Point receives. We are not interested in a second tier product, or a product that is good enough.
Everyone is equal.
Why menstrual cups
Every solution a girl needs to manage her period already exists.
That is what makes this different from almost every other problem in the world. There is nothing to invent. No breakthrough to wait for. No decade of research standing between a girl and a solution. This is a resourcing problem, and resourcing problems can be solved. This one could be solved tomorrow if the right people pointed the right money at it.
What keeps it unsolved is stigma, silence and where resources get sent.
As of August 2026: more than 46,000 menstrual cups distributed. More than 6,000,000 days returned to girls and women.
Accreditation
