Readers of South African newspapers The Star, The Mercury, and Cape Times may have thought their regular issue of the paper was misprinted — or maybe even soiled in delivery — when they saw bright red blood stains leaking from the front to back covers.
But it was a targeted campaign by the MENstruation Foundation to shine a light on period poverty.
The blood isn’t real, but the printing job is accurate: It looks like someone had used the newspapers as sanitary napkins.
And the reality is, some women and girls do.
“This is not a pad,” South African influencer and “menstruation minister” Candice Chiwra wrote in an Instagram post about the newspapers. “But for millions of girls, women and people who menstruate every month in South Africa, it is.”
So for World Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28, the nonprofit teamed up with advertising agency Joe Public to ensure nobody turns away.
The red stain bleeds through the pages in the paper. Photo courtesy of MENstruation Foundation
“Four million South African schoolgirls still can’t afford period products,” the nonprofit wrote on its Instagram. “How is this not front-page news?”
The ad bleeds through multiple pages of the various independent newspapers, landing on an ad that has one large red stain in the middle, with the simple text: “A newspaper can absorb the blood, but not the shame.”
The MENstruation Foundation was founded in 2018 — by two men: Siv Ngesi and Marius Basson — when Basson’s daughter turned 8, and he called up his friend and realized they needed to do something about period poverty.
They learned that around 8 million South African women can’t afford sanitary products — half of them girls in school. And because of this, an estimated 240 million education days are lost every year because they don’t have access to the products they need to go about life in a safe and dignified way.
Siv Ngesi next to a sanitary pad dispensing machine. Photo courtesy of MENstruation Foundation
From there, the foundation designed the Sanitary Pad Dispensing Machine Project, installing units in girls’ bathrooms across the country to provide a free pack of high-quality pads every month.
By August 2025, their website claims, the organization has saved over 500,000 education days through the machine.
Now, the foundation has also opened its own pad factory and continues to advocate for an end to period poverty through campaigns like this.
“I’m always, always on a mission to end period poverty,” Ngesi said in an Instagram video about the newspaper campaign. “I believe that if men bled once a month, sanitary products would be free.”
He went on to show an example of a newspaper with a large blood stain on its front page and reminded people to follow an accompanying QR code to donate to the MENstruation Foundation.
“I am honestly so proud of this,” he said. “We really are making period poverty front-page news.”
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Header image courtesy of MENstruation Foundation
