In Uganda, menstruation ends schooling for more girls than most education data captures. Irregular access to sanitary products, inadequate facilities, and a pervasive silence around periods mean that monthly, quietly, girls miss class. Over time, those absences accumulate and for some, they don’t come back.
The 2025-2026 Ugandan cohort of GHC’s Africa Leadership Accelerator designed their coalition project to interrupt that pattern at the teacher level. Their Teen Health Lab launched Phase 1 at Kololo Senior Secondary School in Kampala in May with a Training of Trainers workshop for ten teachers focused on menstrual health, the intersection of hormonal change and mental wellbeing, and practical tools for supporting students in distress.
The curriculum covered the menstrual cycle, common myths that circulate among students and teachers alike, and a Listen-Validate-Guide framework for teachers responding to girls who come to them struggling. Fellows also introduced screening tools for anxiety and depression, a deliberate addition given rising rates of mental health challenges among Ugandan adolescents and the limited infrastructure available to address them. Kololo SS serves roughly 7,000 students across the year. Equipping even a fraction of its teaching staff to recognize early signs of distress and respond with care is not a small thing.
One exchange from the workshop captured the stakes of the work plainly. A male teacher acknowledged that he had repeatedly marked a girl absent for truancy without ever considering that her absences might be period-related. He hadn’t been indifferent. He’d been uninformed. The workshop changed that.
Pre- and post-training assessments showed measurable shifts in teacher knowledge and confidence. As the sessions went on, fellows observed a change in the quality of conversation itself. Teachers began naming things directly and the silence around menstruation started to break open.
Phase 2 will bring the same training to student peer leaders, extending the model’s reach into classrooms, dormitories, and informal networks where adolescents actually talk to each other. The cohort is also exploring partnerships with additional schools to scale the Teen Health Lab beyond Kololo. When teachers are equipped, they become a health resource students can actually access.