WASH in Schools Empowers Girls’ Education in Rural Cochabamba, Bolivia: An assessment of menstrual hygiene management in schools

In 2012, UNICEF and the Center for Global Safe Water at Emory University began a progarmme to support collaborative research on exploring menstrual hygiene management (MHM) challenges faced by female students in four countries: Bolivia, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. This report presents the scope of education and health challenges facing girls in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

Through group discussions and individual interviews, this project identifies the challenges as well as the impacts (both long-term and immediate) of lack of guidance on MHM, inadequate school facilities, limited access to absorbent materials, and sociocultural factors associated with rural Bolivian communities and schools.

The analysis incorporates not only findings from the data but also the participants’ recommendations and reflections on how to address and improve menstruation education.