Stories from the Frame.

BWEN began as a question its founders couldn't unhear: why was menstrual health written about in textbooks but unspeakable in households — and what would it take to change that? Shyaka Farid Lwanyaaga and a circle of public-health students at Cavendish University started organising in the city's most densely-lived neighbourhoods, taking the conversation into the open air of community spaces because it had been kept indoors too long.

We called ourselves the Wellbeing Foundation then. The premise was simple and uncompromising: when a young person from a marginalised community rises, they don't just rise on their own — they widen the door behind them. They become a translator, a witness, an organiser. They make the next rising possible.

"When a young person from a marginalised community rises, they don't just rise on their own — they widen the door behind them."

A capacity-building partnership with the Swedish organisation Wise Economy Global Association — funded by FORUM SYD — gave the work a structural backbone: governance, project management, advocacy methodology, training. With that, what had been a campus initiative became an organisational practice. We built a volunteer model, formalised partnerships, expanded media reach, and grew our literacy across SRHR, menstrual health management, human rights, and governance.

The rebrand to BWEN — the Buntu Wellbeing Experience Network — kept the philosophy and added the architecture to scale it. The story of every Lab, every campaign, and every show that followed begins here.

In 2019, with funding from the Swedish Institute and our long-standing partner Wise Economy Global Association, BWEN began a two-year Creative Force project. The thesis was direct: shame is enforced through silence, and silence breaks under cultural noise. So we set out to make noise — but the kind that builds trust rather than spectacle.

We worked with local artists, journalists, and civic leaders. We collaborated with neighbouring organisations across the city. We made the menstrual conversation danceable, performable, gameable: dance, song, recited poetry, a board game, puzzles, and the first-ever menstrual-themed fashion show — the prototype of what would later become Shebang Trashion.

"Shame is enforced through silence — and silence breaks under cultural noise."

The civic backbone of the project came from local leadership. Twenty-four parish-level leaders in Kisenyi III joined the work directly: Local Council 1 and 2 chairpersons, councilors from five zones, and seven leaders from five zones in Kamwokya. They were not advisors — they were mobilizers, campaigning alongside us, endorsing the rights-based approach, taking the conversation home. The work travelled north to Zaipi sub-county and stayed alive in monthly creative workshops in Kampala.

The aim was to grow #PeriodProud and #PeriodSupportive communities — to make it understood that period shame is a human-rights issue, not a private inconvenience. Two years in, the proof was unmistakable: by partnering with culture-makers and elected community leaders rather than bypassing them, BWEN had built a model the work could keep using.

In 2019, BWEN joined the My Period Is Awesome platform — the regional network anchored by Wise Economy Global Association. The Cape Town workshop week was our first time at that table: Sonke Gender Justice running advocacy and governance sessions, Wise Economy leading method development, and grassroots organisations from across the region trading what worked and what didn't.

We were the new ones in the room. We didn't try to disguise it. We brought what we had: creative tools that had already begun to shift conversations in Kisenyi, and a willingness to learn from organisations that had been doing the work longer.

"We were the newcomers in the room. We didn't try to disguise it."

It was during that week that the seed of #NoPeriodShame took root. The first photographs of the campaign were taken in those Cape Town rooms — colleagues across borders raising the V-shaped hand sign before it had a campaign hashtag attached to it. The signal travelled home with us, gathered language from the work, and went global the following year.

The lesson was structural: regional partnership is not about getting bigger, it is about getting accurate. BWEN became more itself by sitting in rooms with Sonke and Wise Economy and the others — not less.