Dear Thilde,

Thanks so much for your email. We will definitely monitor the results and our work of distributing Ruby Cups. We have done a minor study with the Red Cross and Womena in Uganda in 2012 but will engage in a bigger research study now with a third party concerning our larger distribution project connected to the crowd funding campaign.

All the best,
Maxie

Dear Maxie,
With the impressive magnitude of your initative (5000 girls get a ruby cup), it must be time to implement a high quality designed evaluation of your intervention.

Up till today, there is very little evidence to support the cup as a better alternative to eg. pads to managing menstrual hygiene, decreasing health risks etc. There is also no high quality systematic data on the acceptability of the cup, the affordability, and few good qualitative research studies to shed light on girl's practices etc.

With your organisation and the number og girls included, you would be able to collect systematic data to provide new and solid data.

I hope you will consider this:)

Good luck with your mission.
Regards,
Thilde


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Note by moderator: A related thread can be found here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/24-men...rls-in-western-kenya

Perfect! I am glad I could be of any help

Dear Maxie,

Thank you for the edit (I fully agree), the other documents and the information. I will forward these to others as well.

Hoping the best for Makit as well as all the women who would benefit from using the Ruby Cup,

Warm regards,

Sowmya

Dear Sowmya,

Please see my edits in the attached documents. Thanks so much for your effort to draft informational material concerning Ruby Cup . I have attached our official infomaterial (also available in Germana and Spanish) that you are most welcome to send around.

Concerning your questions.

1) pricing: we basically operate with four different price ranges:
Internet sales: 27,95 EUR
NGO /company sales: 10 USD
Kenyan supermarkets: 21 USD
Low income girls: 100 KES or below (1 USD)

You can read more about our "buy one give one stratgey" here .

We are still experimenting with different price levels but this is about where we are right now.

2)c2c certification? Not too sure what exactly you mean. We have the required European CE certification, and the Ugandana UBS and of course the Kenyan KEBS

3)Yes, we charge a training fee for doing trainings about menstrual hygiene and the use of Ruby Cup at organisations

All the best!!

Maxie

Hi Maxie,

Your venture sounds really interesting and has a lot of promise. Congrats on your success! And more people should know about it. I have made an Intro Note on Makit and Ruby Cups summarizing the information in the three discussion threads (please see attached file) so that everyone can simply forward this file to individuals / organizations that can help make Ruby Cups reach more women. Please make edits as you think is necessary.

Some questions:
(a) Pricing: Has there been any change in price since introduction based on field experience and / or operating model requirements?,
(b) Any updates on C2C certification that was being explored?
(c) Fees: Do you charge any fees for providing training to agents / salespersons of external organizations?

Regards,

Sowmya

I wanted to post an update on the status of our Indiegogo campaign. On April 7th, we finished our campaign with 105% of our funding goal raised, or $42,000 USD. We were honored by the amount of support we received from more than 500 individual donors.

With the money raised, we were excited to head to Kenya. By the beginning of May, the Ruby Cup team was ready to distribute the first batch of menstrual cups to one of their partner organisations based in Kisumu, the Golden Girls Foundation (GGF)



It was a wonderful trip that was full of insights. We saw first-hand the work GGF is doing to empower girls and women in their community. For their Ruby Cup distribution project , GGF told us that they’ve found that working with mentors makes an enormous difference. So every school that is part of our distribution project has at least one woman mentor who is herself a Ruby Cup user. She is someone who can be trusted and girls can ask her all the questions they want about her experience with the cup.

In Kisumu, we mainly work with secondary school girls. We’re beginning to see our work really take root there: some older girls who have been using Ruby Cup for a while are now teaching the others how to use and take care of it.

Of course, our health trainers were also a key part of our distribution visits. At every school, these trainers did a reproductive health session and talked about Ruby Cup. We were greeted with cakes and soft drinks at every school, and we all signed the visitor’s books before we left. Videos from our visits to Kisumu will be available on our YouTube channel soon.



Our partnership with GGF now includes engagement in Ruby Cup sales. In contrast to our standard distribution projects, where girls receive Ruby Cups for a very small symbolic price, for this initiative the women associated with GGF receives free Ruby Cups that they can then re-sell in the community and earn additional income from those sales. Christin of GGF is in charge of the sales and she also is the coordinator of the entire Ruby Cup project in Kisumu.

In addition to the Ruby Cups we distributed in the course of our trip to Kisumu, we plan to continue distributing many more as soon as we have our new machine and production up and running. With the funds we raised through crowdfunding we’ve been able to start that process and have already found a fantastic supplier in Italy.



Possibly one of the most exciting events of the trip was our meeting with the deputy governor of Kisumu, Mrs. Ruth Odinga, who is also sister of Raila Odinga, former Prime Minister of Kenya. With her as our ambassador in Kenya, we will all strive together to provide Ruby Cups to every girl in Kisumu county, and ultimately the entire country of Kenya. We're thinking big , and thanks so the success of our crowdfunding campaign and the support of so many people, our big dreams are becoming reality.

I was asked by Elisabeth how girls (first time users) accept the Ruby Cup .
And to be honest I cannot give a definite answer or mention a percentage because it depends. It really depends on the region, on the tribe on the culture and, of course, the girls as independent individuals themselves.

This is why we at Ruby Cup always work in close cooperation with local partners, such as the Golden Girls Foundation in Kisumu (Kenya), the Danish Refugee Council in Uganda, or with schools based in the slums (Kawangware, Kibera, Korogoche). And we listen to what the girls say about insertion, the hymen, water to mention but a few. And we listen to their parents and their teachers. Education is one, if not the most important part of our work. We believe our local partners know better about water, hygiene, culture and customs than any other. And surprisingly insertion is not as much of an issue than explaining that girls can use the cups while going to the toilet and that it will not fall out during sports.

Let me know if you have other questions.

Thanks for now.

Maxie

(Note by moderator (EvM): to read the conversation on the Ruby cup business idea that preceded this thread please have a look here: forum.susana.org/forum/categories/24-men...periences-from-kenya, and another older thread here:
forum.susana.org/forum/categories/24-men...siness-idea-in-kenya)

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Second Generation Ruby Cup users teaching their peers about usage while our field officer, Rachael Mwakalio is watching (see photo below).

Since 2012 We have equipped 1500 girls with Ruby Cups and learned about education (safe storage is important otherwise rats will eat the cup), and that quality education is equally important as the mere distribution of cups. So now, with various partner involved, we want to do more.

In order to finance the educational part and the production of more Ruby Cups, we are raising money via Indiegogo. This will support 5000 girls in Kenya, meaning education about menstrual hygiene and give them a 10 year long lasting MHM solution.

Check out the campaign: igg.me/at/RubyCup and join our call for action to #keep girls in school.

Direct link to our video:



Thanks a lot!

Maxie