2019, what a year! Harry and Megan had a baby, Notre Dame burnt down, Hong Kong protested, the Amazon burnt, the first all female space walk happened, people marched for climate policy globally, Finland appointed the youngest prime minister in the world and The Cova Project found its stride. With a challenging end to 2018, 2019 was the year of finding an identity. That identity started with figuring out what kind of entity we were. We’d had advice that becoming a charity was hard, nearly impossible, time consuming and the paperwork was soul crushing. That said, after 2018, we had overcome so many challenges, that we were uncrushable, and so we ran headfirst towards the ACNC’s application. After a couple of months, sitting on a train from Malmö to Stockholm, surrounded by menstrual cups, we got a call from the ATO saying, you’re now officially a charity with DGR 1 status (see moment captured below). That was it, we officially had our birthday. April 1st.

To watch The Cova Project grow over 2019 has been overwhelming. In just 12 months we have provided menstrual cups and menstrual health education to over 3,000 girls in 4 countries. We work with a mother/daughter team in Malawi, accessing the villages in the north. We’ve supplied mobile clinics in rural South Africa, which were able to reach the most isolated communities in the country. We support girls in Nakivale refugee camp in Uganda and we are training a further 8 Ugandan girls to be Project Leaders in Kampala. Finally, we work with local NGO, Educate West Point, in the West Point township in Liberia.

I am so proud of the projects we've established and the collaborative culture we've created. Our local partners are dedicated and excited for the future, Flowcup continues to provide unmatched generosity and we work as hard as possible to ensure success for all involved.

The feedback we've received since our distribution in April has been both positive and constructive and we continue to improve our projects. (See text message from Liberian Project Supervisor, Musa, two days after cups were first distributed.)

We are so excited for the future of The Cova Project. With our newest project, Uganda, we continue to expand our reach and prove that menstrual cups are a solution for girls without access to safe sanitary care. In 2020, we plan to distribute another 4,000 cups across Liberia, Malawi, South Africa, Uganda and Ghana. All of our local partners have had extensive discussions with their communities and girls using the cup and have put out the call for more! Incredibly we see all our pilot projects as a success and are preparing to establish them in a more permanent way. This means considering things as important as having educational materials printed locally. (See Caillie hand folding booklets after printing in Malawi)

We are well down the track of establishing our fourth project, in Ghana. We are regularly contacted to start projects all over the world and have developed an extensive 'local partner application' to identify the right project locations and partners.

As we work, we plan to continue collecting data to show that the cup is a solution to improving school attendance for girls in developing communities. We hope to give more girls and women the opportunity to participate fully in life and education, without the financial and physical burden of menstruation.

2020 here we come!

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