On Aug 15, India celebrated its 77th Independence Day. Over the last 7 decades, India has made progress in various fields of education, economic development, science and technology.
It is one of the most populous countries in the world with a significant percentage of young population which includes a large number of teenage girls in middle school and high school who will likely shape the future of the country in the next decade by joining the workforce and contributing to the social and economic development of the country. This has humongous implications and emphasizes the need to provide uninterrupted education to the school age girls.
As we have said in previous blogs, girls’ schools are frequently interrupted resulting in absences due to inaccessibility to feminine hygiene products on a regular basis. Sometimes it comes down to making a choice between feeding the family versus providing sanitary pads to the girl child to be able to go to school. Obviously the choice is clear and the family tends to feed the child rather than spend it on a disposable product like the sanitary pads.
Our organization strives to fill in that gap and attempts to fulfill the needs of the girls so they can attend school and thus reduce absences from school. Through our project A.M.H.I Muli we have been providing feminine hygiene products to school girls in the Chunabhatti area for the last few months and seeing substantial results. Additionally, we realized that there are girls outside of this area in the nearby towns who are not being helped at this time.
Hence, we made a humble attempt to help some of those girls at the Independence Day celebration in collaboration with a nearby local women’s organization. This organization is called “Sion Bhagini Samaj” which translates to “ Sion Sisters Club”. Although, elaborating on the entire services offered by this club is beyond the scope of this blog, it suffices to say they have celebrations on important calendar dates including the Indian Independence Day. We collaborated with the Board of Directors of this club and arranged for distribution of feminine hygiene products to middle school and high school age girls. The Board of Directors are all women of various ages who talked about various aspects of the topic of menstruation. This gave them the opportunity to talk about the topic openly, address the concerns and questions of the girl attendees and their parents, raise awareness of feminine health and hygiene, educating them about how to take care of themselves during menstruation and on continuing the school education without hindrance due to a regular biological process like menstruation. This interactive conversation helped to dispel some myths, and raised their general understanding about related topics .
Approximately 50 girls were benefited through this donation, which will fulfill their sanitary hygiene requirement at least for the next 2-3 months. We are very proud of this accomplishment and that we have been able to reach several school age girls through our A.M.H.I Muli Project.
We will try to duplicate this effort several times throughout the year so that the girls can attend the school without interruption and do not have to make a choice between buying sanitary pads versus fulfilling other basic needs. These young girls have extremely bright futures and we aim to lend a hand in shaping their future so that they can complete their school, go to college, get in the workforce and make significant contributions to the society and country at large. We envision seeing them become successful, independent, and able to support themselves and their families financially. From our perspective, only when a girl doesn’t have to choose between missing school due to lack of access of sanitary pads and having her other basic necessities fulfilled, she can truly be considered as having achieved Social Independence.
Link to Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN0cOHYJJy57nKDcwkq12kQ
Link to Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/girlhood-unfiltered/id1695611178
Link to Nishka’s Blog: https://nishkautpat.blog/
Link to Kaanchi’s Blog: https://kaanchiutpat.blog/