By Anshu Gupta | Project Leader
Not Just a Piece of Cloth (NJPC) From Goonj
Initiative overview
"Even today at times of emergency while working in the field or when cloth is not available we use leaves from local Sal Trees.” women of Koi tribe, Sugapada village of Daringbadi block, Odisha say about their struggle around cloth for menstruation. On being asked as to how long does a piece of cloth typically last, she added, “On average every woman has two pieces of clothes to use. We use it for months, sometimes for a year till the cloth tears off.” In Indiamillions of women like this tribal woman, still use grass, plastic, rags, sand, ash, dirty cloth, etc to deal with their menses.
Dinabandu, from Kandhamal Zilla Sabuja Vaidya Sangathan (KZSVS), our local partner NGO working in Daringbadi for many years, told us, “These women buy clothes once a year. Many families still take credit from local Sahukars (money lenders) to buy clothes. That’s why these women are forced to use a single piece of cloth for a year.” Cloth for menstruation is not their only challenge, every day they struggle for other basics as well. Faced with such a crisis, assigning priority or whatever meager resources they have, for menstrual cloth is the last thing on the mind of most women in rural and slum India. A vast majority faces great hardships & indignity, besides health risks due to lack of access, awareness, un-affordability and unhygienic practices around whatever these women use for menses. More than a decade ago, in 2005, when Goonj won World Bank’s prestigious Global Development Marketplace award for its work on menstrual hygiene and management, it became one of the first organizations to bring this taboo need into the larger public discourse in India. This was the time of glut of fancy products; ultra thin to extra large wings. Goonj turned a humble piece of urban surplus cloth into a powerful tool to reach women who didn’t even have enough to cover themselves. Today Goonj’s cloth pad MY Pad under the initiative ‘Not Just a Piece of Cloth’ (NJPC) is one of the few efforts reaching out to women in the most far flung villages across India. The initiative is serving adolescent girls and women at the bottom of the development pyramid for more than a decade now. Focussing on the three A's; awareness, access and affordability, Goonj’s goal is two-fold; One, to reach a clean piece of cloth to women who don't even have enough cloth for this basic need. Two, to break the culture of shame and silence around this taboo issue in the cities and villages of India.
Over the years millions of Goonj’s MY Pads have been used as an alternative, a tool to change menstrual practices to open up the shame and silence on this issue with women who have very little awareness about the general health as well. These Pads are probably the cheapest, easy to make, replicable, reusable and eco-friendly sanitary pads today.
Till date Goonj has reached more than 40 lakh/4 million MY Pads (a pack of 5 pads) to parts of 22 states of India through its well-established network of more than 200 grassroots agencies like Panchayats, Indian Army, NGOs, and Self-help groups and its own team.. With each 'MY Pads' packs of 5/10/15 pieces Goonj also reaches 1/2 undergarments as well to women in rural and slum India. The undergarments help safeguard women who go out for open defecation and for managing their menstruation by wearing and managing a cloth pad.
Some comments from women using MY Pads; “Before using MY Pad I used normal cloth. After the meeting with Goonj, I found out about a lot of things around menses. Now I can talk more freely to my friends and daughters about it. Now I know the proper way to wash and dry cloth. The Goonj MY Pad is good to use, since I know it is clean and hygienic” says 37 year old Sunita Devi from Jammu & Kashmir.
Her friend Vinita adds, "I want to thank Goonj for giving me My Pad. I used to wear cloth earlier but honestly it was not as clean as the pad that you gave us. I had never kept the cloth for sun-drying earlier. But now I know the importance.”
Women in Krishan colony, Purnea, Bihar, highlighted their alarming situation in Goonj’s session on menstrual hygiene. They also initiated a sanitation drive in their village. In another nearby colony a girl said, “Nobody talked to me about menstruation before this. Now I will remember my date and will also bathe daily and use this MY Pad.”
Women have also shared about experiencing less boils, pain just by using a cleaner piece of cloth in the form of MY Pad.
We believe that making this simple piece of cotton cloth available to the masses and creating a space to talk about menstrual challenges will help alleviating the stories of helplessness and indignity that women often share with us. That’s why this initiative is called ‘Not Just a Piece of Cloth’, because an old piece of cloth from the cities becomes a practical, affordable, easy to use and environment friendly product and tool for normalizing this basic issue and restoring the dignity and confidence of women. As we use it to open up conversations and discussions about the challenges women face around their menses, this humble piece of cloth helps in making a dent on the culture of shame and silence attached to this Human Issue..!!
One misnomer is that only women in villages are facing menstrual challenges but we found that in cities though women from middle and higher economic strata have access to the market sanitary pads but it doesn’t take away the taboo and culture of shame and silence they face. That’s why Goonj teams take a lot of session with colleges, schools, institutions, corporate etc. on this issue.
Our ‘NJPC-A Million Voices’ campaign (www.njpc.goonj.org) spread out in the cities and villages documenting opinions, challenges and ideas from the masses, is breaking the shame and silence on this issue. Anyone can share their voice on this issue through this brief questionnaire (http://njpc.goonj.org/lets-get-started/).
Watch a film on this issue –https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuqYN6rHRFU&t=14s
Important website; www.njpc.goonj.org and www.goonj.org
NJPC facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/njpc.goonj/
Goonj facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/goonj.org/
To contribute- http://goonj.org/page_id=22576/
Links:
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.
