Notre Dame graduates Elizabeth Scharpf and Denise Couture recently came to Notre Dame to speak to students through a class put on by the Gigot Center for Entrepreneurship.  Scharpf founded Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE) in 2007.  SHE is an organization that helps women in underdeveloped countries obtain the sanitary supplies they need.

Scharpf began this project after recognizing that the lack of suitable sanitary supplies negatively affects not only women and girls, but entire communities.  Without proper supplies, women and girls must miss work and school every three weeks; subsequently, the whole community is negatively impacted.  Moreover, using rags or other inadequate supplies hurts the dignity of these women and girls. “It’s actually this that gets me going every morning,” Sharpf explained.
Correcting this problem takes more than simply obtaining donations from existing businesses and organizations.  If donations of sanitary pads are brought to the countries, people will simply adjust to using these supplies and be left worse than they previously were.

Rather, Scharpf chose to attack this global issue by providing these countries with the supplies and skills necessary to start their own companies that make a special version of a sanitary pad, which the women will sell to other women.  This arrangement helps the local economy by providing more jobs and further helping the women and girls to continue attending school and working even when on their period.

Scharpf began her work in Rwanda.  Her holistic approach involves advocacy, education, and business.  She works to increase the knowledge about the great need for sanitary supplies and the positive impact this will have on a specific community.  She then educates the people about sexual and reproductive health, making use of the existing network of health workers in the country.  Finally, she introduces her method of making sanitary pads to the community to allow the creation of jobs and a better economy for the area, as well as improving the health, education, and quality of lives of the women and girls.

Couture, Director of Product and Technology Development at Innovation Edge, emerged when Scharpf looked toward Innovation edge for a partnership.  Couture helped SHE develop the most cost-effective, satisfactory sanitary pad possible out of the natural materials SHE’s team found to use—fiber from the trunk of banana trees.  After the second prototype, Innovation Edge developed a product that is comfortable, sustainable, and cost-effective.

SHE is a truly remarkable project; moreover, improving the situation in Rwanda has only been the start of Scharpf’s plan.  As Scharpf noted, “Our goal as social entrepreneurs is to get out of a job—to solve the problem. She hopes to continue spreading SHE’s operations throughout the world with the hope that women and girls in underdeveloped countries will continually be provided better health, better opportunities in education, and an altogether better life.

Ellen Roof is a sophomore majoring in business and psychology who is still searching for her voice after Saturday’s rollercoaster of a football game.