60 Dignified Days for a Woman

This year when Goonj’s NJPC (Not Just a Piece of Cloth) initiative work on menstruation reached the remote villages in districts of West Medinipur and North 24 Parganas, West Bengal, we started work with 700 women who are so poor and backward that they don’t even have the means to purchase cloth for managing their menses. They keep on reusing the most tattered clothes for around 5-6 months. Goonj is addressing the three critical aspects or what we term as Triple AAA of this issue; Accessibility, affordability and awareness on the menstrual hygiene issue for these women.

 Goonj decided to work on a year long intervention with these 700 women. Over the year we reached 2800 packs of MY Pads and 2100 undergarments and opened a dialogue through many awareness sessions where women gave some insightful feedback-:

20 year old Nabomi comes from a tribal family from Baksak village, West Medinipur. She and her husband work very hard to make ends meet given her family’s poor economic condition. Managing her periods every month was thus a constant challenge made worse by the fact that no one in her village even discussed about this basic need. She couldn’t even talk/share about this topic to her parents or her husband.

 After attending Goonj’s NJPC menstrual hygiene awareness meetings she feels happy as she was able to share the harsh realities that during her periods she used a old cloth for 5- 6 month and had no panty to use. This severely affected her mobility during periods. She couldn’t go to the market for selling vegetables, which in turn worsened her family’s economic condition.

Now she is happy, having received Goonj’s MY Pads and Undergarments. “The loops in the undergarment hold the pad so it remains in place. This helps me walk and move round comfortably without any fear of staining my clothes.” She says.  She shares that she now understands that this is a health issue and there is nothing to hide.

 Women and young girls from Village Dhoba Gobindopur, West Medinipur come from a community of daily laborers or farmers, with a majority from OBC/ST community.  These women shared their satisfaction around using MY Pads during their menstruation days. Earlier they used any cloth pieces to manage their menses. They would wash their menstrual cloth at night, trying to do it hidden from everyone. This meant unhygienic practices and infections resulting in loss of work and daily earnings.

 These women expressed happiness in using Goonj’s MY Pads. After the meetings they requested Goonj to provide MY Pads at reasonable prices so that they could buy them easily.

 The outcomes of this intervention are satisfying since MY Pads are working as an entry point into the lives of these women, getting them to open up about their challenges on this issue. Earlier they neither had access to market napkins, nor could they afford market napkins while they had little awareness about related health and hygiene issues. We hope Goonj has addressed all these aspects in a comprehensive manner.

Links:

• http://njpc.goonj.org/