By Sneha Dey | Project co-coordinator
The roads connecting to Ambapada village of Banswara district in Rajasthan are rough.. The nearest market is 10 kms away for any woman who wants to buy a sanitary cloth/pad. The land here is fertile but the farmers have to depend on rain for farming. Life overall is tough as many people survive as daily wages laborers struggling on a day to day basis.
Like many other villages of India there is little awareness among men and women about menstrual health and hygiene, in a culture of shame and silence and taboos. When Goonj’s team reached this area and started to women of the area about this basic, there were hardly any women or adolescent girl who spoke up in our Break the Silence Meeting. On a specific question to the 14 years old Kanchan about her menstrual practices, the conversation stared as she spoke up. With some hesitation Kanchan shared how she had no idea what menstruation was when she first menstruated. She shared that she was very scared but her mother just gave a her a piece of saree and never explained the reason for menstruation.
Kanchan shared that she uses whatever cloth is available to her at home; blouse piece to trouser etc for this purpose. She also shared the many taboos and don’ts she faces during those five days like not being allowed to enter the kitchen or not allowed to touch anybody, forbidden from going to temple. Even going to school is not allowed during menstruation.
All these restrictions make her very angry but her mother has only one response “This is how women are supposed to live their lives.”
When Goonj team started implementing menstrual hygiene related awareness in Kanchan’s village under our Not Just A Piece Of Cloth (NJPC) initiative, she and other adolescent girls and women of her village learnt about many critical things about menstruation like hygiene practices around using cloth pad and disposal of used sanitary cloth etc. The Break the silence meetings with the girls and women of the community provide a much needed space, where they can talk openly, discuss and unlearn the culture of shame and their menstrual challenges.
All the women and girls who attended awareness meeting receive Goonj’s Cloth Pads made from surplus urban cotton cloth. These MY Pads thus become an entry point into the lives of women who have neither have access to market pads, nor can they afford the market pads while lack of menstrual health and hygiene awareness only adds to their challenges. The NJPC programme focuses on normalizing the issue so that these women can speak up about their related challenges. This process of normalizing is about talking to them about the do’s and don’ts, using cloth as sanitary pads etc. This attention to Access, Awareness and Affordability around menstruation forms a part of Goonj’s Triple A strategy, where the first step is to normalize the subject among women by opening up conversations around it.
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