Poor education, far away from mainstream, blind believes etc create a huge health & sanitation problem among 250 nos of tribal adolescent girls of 12 nos of remote villages of Odisha, India. They are using dirty unhygienic cloth during menstrual cycle instead of sanitary pads which creates blistering, soreness, infections and long-term health issues. With our intervention i.e. training on ARSH, menstrual health and hygiene and supply of low cost sanitary pads, this problem can be solved.
Onset of menstruation is considered as a landmark in the growth and development of an adolescent girl. Majority of adolescent in the rural areas do not adopt hygiene practices during their menstrual cycles and thereby are vulnerable to many diseases. Lack of awareness and affordability is the reason why they continue using unhygienic practices during menstruation. Menstruating girls experience many restrictions, especially for religious activities. They also miss school during periods.
Menstruation is a taboo topic, even those responsible for spreading awareness do not have the correct information. This project is well designed and focused on both capacity building and easy access to napkin with affordability. Training stakeholders, Creating peer leaders, Mobilizing communities, Creatin an enabling environment in schools are the major activities to be carried out during the project implementation in 12 villages for overcome the problems.
The initiative will ensure affordability and accessibility of sanitary napkin in the most interior 12 tribal villages of Odisha. It will help empowering 250 adolescent girls. Their health will be improved, also improvement in school attendance. Social taboo will be decreased.
This project has provided additional documentation in a DOCX file (projdoc.docx).
