Standing in her school uniform, Bangi Jemima of St. Paul Church of Uganda Primary School in Kyebando holds a large pack of Union Sanitary Pads consisting of 100 pads in her hands.

It is a simple image, but it captures what the Kili Clear Campaign is ultimately about: making sure a girl’s period does not become a reason for her to miss school.

For Jemima and girls like her, access to sanitary pads is more than receiving a hygiene product. It means having one less worry when her period comes around and one more reason to remain focused on school and their future.

Her story is one of the human faces behind the Kili Clear- “1 Million Pads for 1 Million Girls”  Campaign, an initiative by the Union Transport Alliance (UNION), in partnership with The Mental Health Awareness Initiative (TMHAI), aimed at tackling period poverty by making sanitary pads more accessible and supporting vulnerable girls.

The campaign seeks to mobilise enough support to distribute one million packs of sanitary pads to one million girls across Uganda. The initiative is built on a straightforward commitment: girls should not have to choose between their periods and staying in school.

From a campaign to real girls

Since the campaign started on 15 August 2026, Kili Clear has continued to turn that commitment into community-level action.

On the Union website, the campaign publicly shows donations worth 1,500 packs of Union Sanitary Pads have been collected. However, due to the school-break, so far 1015 packs of Union Sanitary Pads have been distributed reaching girls in schools and communities across Uganda. Among the beneficiaries are girls at St. Paul Church of Uganda Primary School in Kyebando, where the highest donation of 350 packs were distributed.

The campaign’s records also show distributions to schools and communities in Buikwe, Kireka, Butambala, Kasese, Serere, Kakiri and Mukono.

That means the campaign has already moved beyond awareness and fundraising to something tangible: placing pads in the hands of girls who need them.

These girls are not a statistic on a campaign dashboard. They are proof of the positive impact Kili Clear is working to create in the lives of vulnerable girls across the country.

The cost of a period should not be missing a lesson

For many families, sanitary pads are a recurring expense. For girls growing up in households where every shilling has competing demands, that expense can become a barrier to managing menstruation safely and with dignity.

The “1 Million Pads for 1 Million Girls” initiative seeks to respond to that reality directly. Union says a contribution of UGX 20,000 provides one pack of Union Sanitary Pads enough to support one girl for an entire year.

The ambition is therefore much bigger than distributing sanitary pads.

It is about ensuring their attendance, dignity, confidence and opportunity.

At the initiative’s launch, Union Transport Alliance CEO Fred Ssenoga Bagenda emphasised that the campaign was intended to go beyond making sanitary products affordable and reach girls who cannot afford them at all.

The progress so far is encouraging, but the numbers also put the scale of the ambition into perspective.

Against a target of one million packs, the 1015 publicly recorded packs amount to less than one-tenth of one percent of the overall goal.

That gap is precisely why Kili Clear is calling for wider participation.

The campaign is also leveraging Union’s extensive informal sector network to take the initiative into communities beyond the transport sector and reach girls in all underserved areas.

It’s More Than a Pack of Pads

The real measure of Kili Clear will not simply be the number of packs collected or distributed.

It will be the girls who walk into class when their periods come. It will be the girl who no longer has to worry about what she will use next month. It will be the parent who knows her daughter has what she needs.

And it will be girls like Jemima. 

And with one million girls as the goal, the Kili Clear campaign is asking you as a Ugandan who’s able to afford two meals a day to do something bigger than donate pads to help keep a generation of girls in school.

Union is inviting government institutions, development partners, companies, schools, civil society organisations and individual Ugandans to sponsor girls and contribute to the campaign. 

Donate by dialing *289*9#, with contributors able to support schools of their choice or Union-designated beneficiary schools.

For more information about the Kili Clear campaign please call 0326500850 or follow Kili Clear campaign updates on our social media platforms: 

Instagram: @theunionug

X: @TheUnionUg

TikTok: @theunionug

Website: https://transportunion.ug/kili-clear/