A direct mailer to grab Always' attention enough to add Itirele-Zenzele High School to the lists of schools their Always Keeping Girls in School programme visits already. How? We used what Always knows best - their own packaging design.

By amending Always' existing packaging's copy and visuals, our adjusted packs drew attention to the shocking reality of not having sanitary wear, the ineffective nature of the alternatives girls resort to and the consequences of missing school. To further dramatise what school girls use as sanitary pad alternatives, we replaced the actual sanitary pads with packs of leaves.

The packs also contained our call to action that asked Always to please bring their Always Keeping Girls in School Programme to their patner school Itirele-Zenzele to help ensure their 535 girls Always stay in school. This was followed by One School At A Time's Managing Director's contact details.

Implementation: A direct mailer to Always South Africa, which is part of P&G South Africa. We sent the people working in Always' marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility each one of our direct mailers containing the set of three different packs.

Timeline: Our direct mailers were sent to the Always' marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility team on the 30 May - 31 May 2017 as well as to selected media representatives.

Placement: Direct mailers to P&G Head Office, 12th Floor, 15 Alice Lane, Sandton, 2196.

Direct mailers to selected media representatives.

Scale: 3 Direct mailers each containing a set of three boxes were sent to Always South Africa. 10 Direct mailers each containing a set of three boxes were sent to different media representatives and influencers across the country.

Direct mailers were sent to Always' marketing and Corporate Social Responsibility team on the 30 May 2017 and to selected media representatives. Always contacted One School At A Time less than two weeks later, on 15 June 2017, about bringing the programme to Itirele-Zenzele.

Always were, in the own words of communications manager Jeanine Du Plesis, "blown away" by the direct mailer and also said the following: "Of course we will bring the Always Keeping Girls in School Programme to Itirele-Zenzele. We'd be honoured". Always brought their programme on 7 August 2017 and donated 1326 packs of pads on the day.

Additionally they added Itirele to the list of schools the programme visits quarterly which will provide over 5300 packs of pads yearly. Girls interviewed said that they felt empowered by the donation and educational talks. Media who received packs spoke about it online helping create awareness of the issue.

Never Unsanitary Pads was a direct mailer delivered to Always Sanitary Pads head offices in South Africa.

In South Africa millions of school girls are absent from school roughly one week of every month because they don’t have access to sanitary pads. In a country where education is key to breaking the cycle of poverty, how could a girl miss 12 weeks’ worth of learning every year due to something so innocuous as a menstrual cycle? One-School-At-A-Time could not let this be the case for girls attending their partner school, Itirele-Zenzele.

The approach was to directly target one corporate that had the ability to solve this problem for these girls – the brand Always. More specifically, their Always-Keeping-Girls-in-School programme, which donates Always sanitary pads to school girls on a regular basis. The ask was that Itirele-Zenzele would be included in their programme and the strategy was to grab their attention by packaging the facts in way that would hit close to home for the Always brand.

Millions of South African girls miss up to a week of school every month because they can’t afford sanitary pads. Their only solution is using substitutes like leaves, sand and newspaper.

One School At A Time, a South African NGO, that believes in the power of education to bring about social and economic change, works with the impoverished Itirele-Zenzele High School outside of Johannesburg. We sent Always a direct mailer asking them to bring their Keeping Girls In School Programme to our school.

The program provides young schoolgirls with quarterly donations of free sanitary towels as well as other empowering information about puberty and menstruation, educational resources, and motivational talks aimed at keeping them in school. All of which Itirele-Zenzele desperately needed.