Social entrepreneur, Ramona Kasavan, is committed to helping girls and women in some of South Africa’s poorest areas empower themselves. This mission began in earnest in 2013 when she founded the country’s first and only black female-owned sanitary pads company, Mimi Women (formerly Happy Days), and began a massive sanitary pads drive.
“When I discovered that thousands of South African girls were not attending school at certain times of the month because they did not have access to sanitary pads, I felt compelled to do something about it. That’s when I started Happy Days, a non-profit organisation, which was dependent on donor funding,” says Kasavan.
When Kasavan wearied of chasing donors, she made a critical decision to rebrand the organisation ‘Mimi Women’ and transform it into a for-profit operation aimed at supporting what then became its non-profit arm, the Mimi Foundation, which keeps girls in school through donated sanitary pads. Now, a distribution arm provides business opportunities for women in impoverished areas and a fundraising arm solicits funds for the establishment a local factory to manufacture pads.
Kasavan says Mimi is the Swahili word for ‘I am’. “It’s a potent declaration of personal power – of acknowledging that every individual is important in her own right. This is how all girls and women should view themselves. Not as people who accept a status quo characterised by abuse, poverty and powerlessness.”
Today, Kasavan has developed the MimiBizBox, a business-in-a-box tool that allows disadvantaged women – or Agents of Change – to sell affordable sanitary pads in their local communities and create an independent living for themselves.
Mimi Agents who are a part of Empower Me, are typically historically disadvantaged women of between 18 and 35 years. “It’s a direct selling model that is all about empowering women and giving them the tools to create their own opportunities and grow their own businesses. They can have their own agents or pitch different ideas to business incubators.”
In developing a viable product back in 2013, Kasavan set out to source high quality pads that were not prohibitively expensive. These currently come from local and Chinese manufacturers. The sanitary pad factory, which is expected to be operational before the end of 2017, will facilitate the way for Mimi pads to enter the local FMCG market.
Kasavan says for every Mimi pack sold, a pack with be donated to the foundation. “In this way customers can purchase a necessary item, but know that they are making a larger contribution to society. In conjunction with the DFI’s, we are also looking to install pad vending machines at schools where, once again, for every pad sold, one will be donated to the foundation.”
Kasavan urges women who want to transcend their difficult circumstances or become entrepreneurs not to take ‘no’ for an answer and to fight for what they want. “If I had let the numerous barriers I’ve encountered stand in my way, Mimi Women would not exist today and my life would be a lot poorer for it.”
