TRANSFORMATION_______________________________________________________________
THE GREY
FOUNDATION
1. Who are/is the founder/s of The Grey
Foundation
We are a team of 6 female entrepreneurs
The foundation came about through our inherent
need as entrepreneurs to find avenues to give back
to the communities, more specifically the rural
communities and to people from areas where basic
services do not exist. As a company established and
run by women, we realised that there are so many
women and children in rural and metro areas that
do not have access to basic services. Our focus
prior to the inception of the foundation was driven
by the CEO, CFO and CPO (all women) to focus
on the aged people that live in homes and rely on
hand-outs and donations to survive. We identified
one such home in Alexandra Township just three
kilometres from our office where we targeted our
assistance. It was not long after we started working
in the area that we identified a number of schools
in the area where children attending school did not
have as much as a school bag or a bottle for water.
It was through this involvement with the schools
that we encountered a number of girls that
approached our team with “wish lists” which to our
surprise included sanitary pads. At that time, to our
surprise, we discovered that such a basic item was
not available to young girls but we found condoms
in all government freely available.
Our team formalised the establishment of the
Grey foundation and obtained the necessary
certification and accreditations that enabled us
as an organisation to put structure and
objectives in place to assist and participate in
driving an initiative targeted toward enabling
and assisting young girls with the basic sanitary
pad supply through the foundation
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2. What does the foundation aim to do?
School girls avoid attendance to school during their
period due to the embarrassment which made us
realise that the lack of an item contributes to so
many hindering obstacles and subsequent
repercussions to the development and growth of the
child.
We realised that initiatives to supply sanitary pads, as
amazing as they are, are unable to provide long term
and consistent supply given the need and reliance on
sponsorships and hand-outs to secure the funds to
acquire / purchase sanitary pads and when the funds
do not come in, the pads cannot be supplied and the
young girls are right back to where they started.
The objective of the foundation is to provide a
consistent long term quality solution that is deployed
with structure and co-ordination in a steady
impactful way. Our Foundation provides education
on hygiene and menstruation to all the school girls
taken on through the foundation so that they will
not only gain the support of a much needed item
each month, but the knowledge of how to take care
off and understand their bodies as well as discard
their products with respect to the environment and
those around them.