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Fifteen-year-old Nasreen Jehan, a student in the eastern Indian state of
“It helps me keep track of my menstrual calendar,”
says the 9th-grader, who attends a government-run, all-girls school
in a town called Bettiah. “Also, it helps me talk about menstruation with my
friends.”
Of the 24 small beads that comprise the delicate
adornment, six are read, symbolising the days of her monthly period. Jehan made
the bracelet herself at a menstrual hygiene workshop in Bettiah last year,
organised by Nirmal Bharat Yatra (NBY) – a nationwide sanitation campaign
spearheaded by the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative
Council (WSSCC).
Educators at the workshop talked Jehan and her peers
through the biological process of menstruation, offering tips on how
to properly wash and dry menstrual cloths if sanitary napkins are
unavailable.
“My mother and my aunt never stepped out of the house when they had
their periods. That was our family tradition." -- Soumya Selvi, a
10th-grader in southern
Finally, they gave Jehan the most
important message of all: that menstruation is just as natural as hunger or
sweating, and that there is nothing to be ashamed or afraid of.
It is rudimentary advice, but crucial in a country
like
According to a study undertaken by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) back in 2012, some
225 million adolescent girls attend one of the 1.37 million schools spread
across the country. Of them, roughly 66 percent have no knowledge of
menstruation before they reach puberty.
A full 88 percent of these girls do not have access to
what the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) calls WASH facilities: water,
sanitation and hygiene, including soap or sanitary supplies.
According to data compiled by AC Nielsen in 2011, the
average Indian adolescent girl (between the ages of 12 and 18) misses 50 days
of school a year as a result of inadequate facilities, or a lack of awareness
of menstruation. Some 23 percent of all schoolgirls – over 50 million in total
– drop out of school altogether once they hit puberty.
Of
Because the subject is seldom discussed, even among
families, peers or community members, many women resort to extremely unsanitary
options during their period, including the use of unsanitised cloth, ashes or
sand. Reproductive tract infections (RTIs) are 70 percent more common among
women who engage in these practices.
This year, for the first time, the world will mark May
28 as Menstrual Hygiene Day, designed to address the very challenges countries
like
Against this backdrop, the NYB campaign is not only
timely, it is essential if
Also known as the Great WASH Yatra, NYB aims to
“improve policy and practice in an extremely challenging and taboo area of
sanitation and hygiene: Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM).”
Launched in 2012, the 150,000-dollar campaign –
generously supported by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – will continue until 2016.
Already it has reached over 12,000 women
and girls around the country, an overwhelming majority of who are adolescent
students who say that being empowered to break the silence around menstruation
is making a huge difference in their lives.
This process, though, has not been easy. Urmila Chanam,
a Bangalore-based MHM educator who travelled to six states during the early
stages of the campaign, said the stigma against menstruation runs deep, having
been embedded for years in the minds of men and women alike.
“When a girl in
“So, she grows up convinced that this is a shameful
thing that she must not discuss. The first challenge of an educator is to have
the girl overcome this sense of shame and fear. Everything else comes after
that,” added Chanam, who also runs a web-based campaign called ‘Breaking the Silence’ that encourages both
women and men to openly discuss the issue.
The determined efforts of a handful of NGOs and
activists like Chanam have set the wheels of a full-blown movement in motion,
with thousands of young women across the country coming forward to share their
experiences.
A fine example of this is Soumya Selvi, a 10th-grade
student in a girls’ school in Srirangam, a town located about 320 km south of
Chennai city in southern
Three years ago, Selvi and her fellow classmates were
privy to a UNESCO-led reproductive health campaign, and became virtual
ambassadors for the issue. Selvi alone has shared her knowledge with nearly 50
other girls in her school and her neighborhood. She has also not missed a
single day of school during her period.
“My mother and my aunt never stepped out of the house
when they had their periods,” she told IPS. “That was our family tradition.
But, I told them, ‘this will happen to me until I am 50 years old, perhaps
older. Should I sit at home all my life?’
“After that, they never asked me to miss school,” she
recounted with a wide smile.
Still, experts agree that independent efforts can only
achieve so much. Without government support, it could take decades to reach
every woman and girl who remains fearful and silent. What is needed, they say,
are inclusive and targeted training programmes that can help scale up impacts
of individual campaigns.
Mukti Bosco, an eminent activist and founder of
Healing Fields, a Hyderabad-based NGO that works with schools on menstrual
hygiene management, told IPS it is time for campaigns to target female teachers
and mothers, who can “instill positive behaviour in the girls.”
Others emphasise the role of communication as in
invaluable tool in spreading the message. Sinu Joseph, a Bangalore-based MHM
educator, has so far trained 8,000 girls across the southwestern state of
Karnataka using an animation video.
“Young girls often ask, ‘Why can’t I visit a temple
when I have my period?’” Joseph told IPS. “To answer such questions, one has to
first know the cultural history. [Educators] must earn the trust of women and
girls, so that they are comfortable enough to speak. Then they… not only learn,
but also feel empowered.”