GalCare, a social enterprise using blended financing and market-based solutions to end period poverty, announced its launch and opening of its first fully-automated factory in Mbita, Kenya. This factory will make menstrual products accessible to 500,000 women over the next three years, create hundreds of jobs and establish a blueprint for replication in communities around the world.

Co-founded by actress and activist Stephanie March, founder & CEO of dClutterfly Tracy McCubbin and Africa public health expert Peter McOdida, GalCare invests in a women-led business that locally manufactures high-quality sanitary pads, called Galentine Care pads, and turns the products into income, leadership and lasting agency for women and girls in the community. Operating as a 501(c)(3) in the U.S., GalCare raises money to finance its factories during their early stages, keeping profits, jobs and dignity in local hands while creating lasting, systemic change without reliance on continual fundraising.

“Yes, GalCare is a factory, and yes, we make safe, absorbent, high-quality pads that meet the highest standards,” says March. “That should be a given for all women. But GalCare is so much more than manufacturing. We are creating jobs, building skills, reducing stigma and proving that women’s health solutions can be both profitable and transformative.”

GalCare’s model is designed by women, for women to solve a uniquely female problem. From the product and manufacturing process to pricing, marketing and even the company’s name, GalCare was built by and for the ChangeMakers. These are the women who founded the 600 square foot microplant in Mbita where GalCare started. They best understand the needs of this underserved market.

These ChangeMakers have already made a tremendous impact, producing more than half a million sanitary pads for school donation and community use and reaching over 100,000 women and girls in the community through health outreach. Fundraising will be done for the newly built factory, career development and mapping out distribution models over the next three years, after which the factory will become a for-profit social enterprise. In one year alone, GalCare expects to reach over 200,000 underserved women in the marketplace, operating at only 50% capacity.

As it ramps up and continues to fundraise, GalCare will provide career development for the ChangeMakers while producing Galentine Care sanitary pads for sale in the Homa Bay marketplace. Within three years’ time, the factory will become self-sustaining and fully operated by the ChangeMakers. Every pack of pads sold funds training, employment and free pads for schoolgirls, creating a closed-loop impact model that reinvests directly into the community.

“Since joining the organization, I’ve been trained, mentored and now earn income while helping other young women in my community,” says Diana Achieng, one of the founding ChangeMakers. “Through production, marketing and advocacy work, I’ve gained business skills and found my voice. Today, I’m no longer a recipient of change. I am a change-maker. Part of a movement that breaks taboos and opens doors for women.”

Beyond manufacturing, GalCare provides workforce development and leadership training in marketing, quality control, production, sales, distribution, accounting and entrepreneurship. Its ChangeMakers also serve as trusted community health leaders, providing education on sexual, reproductive and menstrual health to reduce stigma and shame around periods, and change menstrual hygiene practices.

Period poverty impacts more than 500 million women and girls globally. GalCare demonstrates this can be addressed at scale through a sustainable business model that serves the community, enables women and girls to manage their periods with agency and dignity, and creates a seachange in how we think about menstrual health.

“The number of women we can impact with this model is unlimited,” says McCubbin. “GalCare is bold, open, generous and entrepreneurial. We are a social enterprise, not a charity, and we believe this is the future of menstrual health.”

GalCare is on a mission to end period poverty by creating local manufacturing and economic opportunities that remove the barriers sustaining this public health crisis, first in Homa Bay, Kenya, then across Kenya and Eastern Africa, and ultimately around the globe.