On the morning of May 28, 2026, the conference hall of the Radisson Blu Mammy Yoko Hotel in Freetown filled with health practitioners, youth advocates, and community stakeholders for a conversation that much of Sierra Leone still struggles to have in public one about menstruation.
It was the 2nd Edition of the Menstrual Hygiene Day Conference, organised by the Mariyam’s Ways Foundation. A year after the foundation staged its inaugural edition on the same date in 2025, the gathering marked more than a calendar anniversary. It marked the consolidation of a movement that has grown from grassroots awareness campaigns into a multi-pronged programme addressing reproductive health, vocational training, education access, and substance abuse rehabilitation all centred on the lives of girls and women who have long been left out of Sierra Leone’s development conversation.
“This programme was designed to highlight the importance of collective action in addressing menstrual health challenges and promoting dignity, confidence, and equal opportunities for girls and women in Sierra Leone,” said Ms. Mariyam Konneh, Founder and CEO of Mariyam’s Ways Foundation, addressing delegates at the close of the event.
Her words landed with weight not merely as an organisational statement, but as a summary of what the foundation had spent the previous year demonstrating in communities across the country.
Perhaps the most visceral moment of the conference came not from a policy expert, but from author Miriam Kama Conteh, whose personal testimony cut through the room.
“I remember when I was young and didn’t understand much about the menstrual cycle,” she told the audience. “My mom had warned me earlier that the moment I saw my period and if I touched a man, I would get pregnant. So when I saw my period in Class 6, I was so afraid of playing with boys I wouldn’t allow them to even shake hands because I didn’t understand what my mom meant.”
The story drew silence, then recognition. It encapsulated precisely the kind of misinformation and cultural silence that speakers throughout the day identified as one of the most persistent threats to the health and confidence of young girls in Sierra Leone. A misplaced warning, delivered with the best of intentions, had turned a natural biological event into a source of fear and social isolation.
Participants at the conference noted that such experiences remain common that generations of girls have navigated menstruation without accurate information, left to interpret their own bodies through rumour, shame, and superstition. Speakers stressed that ending this cycle requires open dialogue, sustained community engagement, and a deliberate effort to normalise conversations about menstrual health in homes, schools, and health facilities.
Dr. Satti, representing the Ministry of Health, addressed the conference on reproductive health, opening his remarks with an interactive exercise designed to anchor the audience in a shared definition. Drawing on the World Health Organisation’s framework, he emphasised that health including reproductive health is not merely the absence of disease, but a state of complete physical, social, and mental wellbeing.
His participation signalled meaningful institutional engagement with the foundation’s work, and underscored a recurring theme of the day: that menstrual hygiene and reproductive health are not niche concerns, but core public health priorities that the state must actively support.
Across multiple sessions, experts reinforced that comprehensive reproductive health education is essential to preventing early and unplanned pregnancies and reducing the transmission of sexually transmitted infections. They also linked reproductive health directly to broader national development goals, arguing that no country can achieve sustainable growth while leaving half its population without adequate information about their own bodies.
Foundation volunteers took the stage to walk delegates through Mariyam’s Ways Foundation’s journey from its formal launch, through its first year of programmes, to an ambitious set of future plans that reflect how far the organisation has evolved.
Since launching, the foundation has conducted community outreach and awareness programmes across multiple areas, with a particular emphasis on reaching rural and underserved communities where access to health information remains limited. It has celebrated Menstrual Hygiene Month with pad donation drives aimed at reducing period poverty and supporting girls to remain in school with dignity.
On education, the foundation has donated school bags and materials to children in vulnerable communities, launched a scholarship scheme to support students preparing for final examinations, provided school supplies to communities in Kenema and Bo, and offered computer scholarships to equip young people with digital skills.
The foundation has also run leadership and public speaking training for its volunteers a point the presenting volunteers made with evident pride, noting that the confidence to address a room of stakeholders is itself a product of the organisation’s investment in young people.
A beauty parlour vocational programme has been established to provide skills training in hairdressing, skincare, and beauty therapy, with the explicit goal of creating sustainable income pathways for young women and men alike.
The volunteers outlined a set of future programmes that reflect lessons the foundation has drawn directly from its fieldwork. A planned pad bank initiative which drew applause from the hall would provide sanitary products to schools on an ongoing basis, ensuring that girls never have to miss class because of their menstrual cycle.
A survey conducted during community outreach revealed that many rural women lack economic activity of their own. In response, the foundation plans to launch an agricultural programme offering farming resources and support to rural women, targeting economic independence as a direct development outcome.
The foundation also intends to expand into skills training for young people affected by drug use, and to support rehabilitation and reintegration efforts through partnerships with existing programmes addressing substance abuse.
For each of these initiatives, the foundation made a direct appeal to the room: for donations, partnerships, sponsorships, and volunteer engagement. “Together we can build stronger communities, empower lives, and create sustainable change in our society,” the volunteers told delegates.
When Mariyam’s Ways Foundation held its first Menstrual Hygiene Day Conference in May 2025, it was an organisation making a statement of intent. One year later, the 2nd Edition was evidence of delivery a broader programme, a longer track record, and a growing coalition of health professionals, government representatives, and community advocates willing to sit in a room and take menstrual health seriously as a development priority.
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The conference closed with the foundation receiving formal recognition for its grassroots advocacy work, commended for its efforts in reaching vulnerable communities and advancing menstrual dignity and reproductive health rights across Sierra Leone.
What began as one woman’s commitment to breaking the silence around menstruation is becoming, conference by conference, donation by donation, a sustained institutional force in Sierra Leone’s public health landscape.
