Menstrual Health Solukhumbu Pilot
Project details
The Menstrual Health Solukhumbu pilot ran across Junbesi, Taksindu and Mahendra Jyoti Secondary Schools in early 2025, funded by the New Zealand High Commission and delivered by Himalayan Trust Nepal with UNFPA. A baseline survey of 161 students and 90 community women in February was followed by a Training of Trainers course, school and community awareness sessions, and the distribution of reusable period underwear and menstrual cups, donated by UNFPA and topped up by Himalayan Trust Nepal.
Knowledge scores rose sharply, from 48 percent correct before the sessions to 90 percent after, and most recipients kept using what they were given: 94 percent of girls wore the period underwear and 85 percent of women tried the menstrual cup. Mingma Khandu Sherpa, from Chaurikharka, had once paid five times the normal price for a single pad in Phakding; she asked Himalayan Trust Nepal to bring the training to her neighbouring villages too. Its results helped the pilot grow into a bigger 2026 phase reaching eight schools.
Before the pilot began, Himalayan Trust Nepal surveyed 38 schools across Solukhumbu and found that while 95 percent had separate toilets for girls, only 63 percent supplied sanitary pads and just 16 percent had any way to dispose of used pads safely. Menstruation is still often treated as something to hide: chaupadi, the practice of isolating menstruating women and girls away from the household, persists in parts of the district, and the pilot's own baseline found four in five participants believed periods were unclean.
Girls in the pilot schools described confusion and fear at their first period. A 14-year-old at Junbesi thought she had a disease and hid it from her mother, only telling her once her second period came. A 15-year-old there walks over an hour to buy pads, and the only brand sold locally gives her a rash. For the adult women, the menstrual cup was often the bigger change: Artimaya Tamang, the local Health Officer, had owned one for two years without using it out of hesitation before the training gave her the confidence to try it, and wrote a formal letter asking for the programme to reach all five wards of her municipality.
The pilot reached 246 people across the three schools and their communities, on a budget of NZD 25,000 from the New Zealand High Commission. It worked well enough that Himalayan Trust New Zealand ran its 2025 Everest Day appeal specifically to keep it going, timed to the 50th anniversary of Junko Tabei's first female ascent of Everest, and a second, larger phase began in 2026, adding a new product partner, Hello Period, and expanding from three schools to eight.