A 12-year-old girl in Germany was so touched by the inspirational work of South African period poverty campaigner Tamara Magwashu that she managed to organise a large charitable donation.

Caity Cutter was moved to do something after being shocked to learn from aBBC article about Ms magwasu that 30% of girls in South Africa did not attend school during their period.

Ms Magwashu has called Caity’s efforts life-changing.

The story, published a year ago, was about how the now 28-year-old from South Africa’s Eastern Cape province was helping girls unable to afford sanitary pads by distributing free ones to schools based in rural, impoverished areas.

Having grown up in a shanty town using rags as sanitary pads – and being bullied for doing so – Ms Magwashu was determined to stop other girls in her community from suffering the same fate.

She created her own business to help girls in the country and beyond.

“I made a choice deep within me that I didn’t want anyone to go through what I did,” Ms Magwashu told the BBC.

“My purpose is to reach every girl who is in need, so they have their dignity. If you deprive a woman of sanitary products it’s a violation of their human rights.”

For Caity, this determination was inspiring – but also an eye-opener.

“I found it really sad that girls my age didn’t have access to clean water, period products and toilets,” she said.

Ms Magwashu had explained that her family in Duncan Village, a township near the city of East London, shared a public toilet with around 50 other people.

“It’s crazy to me that we are living in a world where people can go to the moon but others don’t have a toilet,” Caity said.

Her father, Michael Cutter, had for some time been saving up money from his job at a biopharmaceutical company and had planned to make a charitable donation.

His daughter convinced him that helping Ms Magwashu’s project was a worthwhile cause.

It was an overwhelming moment for the South African.

“They donated 500,000 pads to help girls from marginalised communities. Then further donations went to us getting a warehouse and hiring staff to distribute the pads further,” she told the BBC.

It all went to help Ms Magwashu’s non-profit organisation, Azosule, the charitable wing of which provides pads for free to schools in the poorest communities. It also sells more affordable, sustainable sanitary products.

Ms Magwashu has negotiated a deal with South African supermarket Makro to stock her sanitary pads in their shops countrywide and in the Democratic Republic of Congo.