Help in making life easier for rural women
Channiben Vasava is a resident of Dumalpur village. She is 38 years of age and is a married woman with three daughters. The economy of the family is earned from daily wages. She was aware about Asani sanitary napkins only after attending the Menstrual Hygiene Management awareness program organised by a field officer of Gram Vikas Trust. She says, “Attending the MHM awareness program has helped me to understand the importance of menstrual health and how a woman can take care of herself by small steps of hygiene”. According to the field officer she has also trained her three daughters on using pads after seeing the demo in MHM awareness. She says that she feels very comfortable in using pads and she is now confident that her daughters will also be safe and healthy by using pads instead of clothes.
Asani continues to help women and girls like her to learn about menstrual hygiene and the health benefits of using safe sanitary napkins.
Your help will ensure safe and hygienic menstrual management for the rural women like Channiben. You can help them by sponsoring sanitary napkins
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By donating to this program
you will be sponsoring the overall costs incurred to support the beneficiaries
What the beneficiary gets
Program Description
According to research, over 80% of women in India do not use sanitary napkins.
Sanitary napkins are generally unavailable in rural areas of the country and if available, they are too expensive for rural households to afford.
Therefore, women resort to age-old alternatives like cloth, ashes, and husk sand during menstruation. These substitutes are not only extremely uncomfortable but also the cause of various diseases and infections, some of which have lifelong effects. Unhygienic menstrual practices can affect the health of the girls and women and there is an increased vulnerability to reproductive tract infections and pelvic inflammatory diseases and other complications.
As there are lots of myth and taboos associated with menstruation and also due to lack of education, rural women are not aware of the consequences of unhealthy sanitation, nor are they keen to discuss about menstruation-related problem in the open.
A female from a rural region will almost never ask a male shopkeeper for a packet of sanitary napkin. Even in the urban areas, females are hesitant to purchase napkins.
To overcome these and to make women and girls use sanitary pads for better menstrual hygiene, Gram Vikas Trust in association with Desai foundation started Asani sanitary napkin - for women by women program. In Asani program high quality low cost sanitary napkin are prepared by a group of women and also sold by them at faliya level.
With the help of SHG members, ASHA workers, local leaders or any other NGO in the village, DFT runs campaigns to create awareness among adolescent girls and women.
There is a small team which is involved in the production of sanitary napkins through a machine. The packing and packaging are done by hand.
Gram Vikas Trust
Program Updates
30 September, 2021
Be a free soul when on periods
#2
As we know that when India implemented its first lockdown, sanitary pads was not considered an essential item. It was seen that Sanitary napkin was not available at the local stores and medical stores as the stock was exhausted. The production of the pads had stopped worldwide and the supply was majorly affected during the Covid times. Gram Vikas trust was on its toes when this was going on, we had distributed sanitary pads free of cost at village level to young girls and women. During the second lockdown as well GVT had made sufficient stock for the implantation of the program in case the production house had to shut down. GVT provided around 2000 sanitary pads to the rural and tribal women of Bharuch District who had no access to them. As an impact that was seen that women had a lot to worry about during the lockdown, at least they did not have to worry about their periods during the lockdown.
\n","section":"Activities and work undertaken in the last 5-6 months","question":"\n 1. Please tell us what activities you have undertaken in this program in the last 5-6 months.You can refer to following pointers as\n
- \n
- Any milestones achieved? \n
- Any major events? \n
- Areas covered (cities, states, regions etc) \n
- Number of people impacted? \n
- How were they impacted or helped? \n
The major issue that we faced during the lockdown was that of the transportation of the pads from the production unit to the beneficiary households. Covid 19 made it very difficult for the rural and tribal women to get access to sanitary pads during the periods, as there was no availability of the same in the nearby stores and shops. Although menstruation does not await any calamity or situation but is a regular process for adolescent girls. Firstly, to ease and aid this hurdle, immediate provisions for permission seeking for pad transportation was made through vans from liaison officers i.e. District Magistrate’s Office. At GVT, we are aiming to reach and penetrate our networks to funding agencies and sponsors that resonate with our mission in Menstrual Hygiene Awareness, so that no girl in Rural India is susceptible to diseases occurring from using dirty cloth instead of sanitary napkins.
\n","section":"Challenges faced and next steps","question":"\n 2. Challenges in utilising funds/carrying out operations. Please refer to following points for reference:\n
- \n
- Any challenges faced? \n
- Any covid related hurdles? \n
- How did you overcome it? \n
- What is your goal/aim/activity plan for the next 6 months for this program? \n
We came across an adolescent girl named Anjali residing in the tribal belt of Gujarat. GVT was brought to the light of this helpless girl through a gynaecologist who examined the girl. It was very unfortunate to hear that the poor child was taken aback by her situation and was not even able to frame as to what exactly was the problem when asked by the doctor. Anjali was found to be using unhygienic ways during her menses due to which the skin got irritated resulting in a severe infection. After the incident got reported by the doctor, we helped her by providing her access to sanitary napkins we produce through our Asani Pad Production Unit. The story started on a tragic note but the results were favourable and we are happy to help for the noble cause.
\n","section":"Stories from the ground","question":"\n 3. Any beneficiary impact story you would like to share?\n
"}],"images":["https://cdn.givind.org/static/images/update/b6304f85-5ca4-4d1e-a69a-8670fa291714.jpeg"]}26 March, 2021
Breaking the tabboo.
#1
Sanitary napkins are generally unavailable or are expensive in rural areas of the country. Therefore, women resort to age-old alternatives like cloth, ashes, and husk sand during menstruation. A female from a rural region will almost never ask a male shopkeeper for a packet of sanitary napkin. Even in the urban areas, females are hesitant to purchase napkins. We often see that that women at medical store prefer a black plastic bag when it comes to purchase of pads.
To overcome these and to make women and girls use sanitary pads for better menstrual hygiene, Gram Vikas Trust in association with Desai foundation started Asani sanitary napkin - for women by women program. In Asani program high quality low cost sanitary napkin are prepared by a group of women who come from rural population and also sold by saleswomen of different villages at faliya level. We currently have over 150 saleswomen who are engaged in selling of the sanitary pad as livelihood option. With the help of SHG members, ASHA workers, local leaders or any other NGO in the village, GVT-DFT runs campaigns to create awareness among adolescent girls and women in rural pockets.
There is a small team which is involved in the production of sanitary napkins through a machine. The folding, packing, sanitizing is also carried on by rural women and through hand. And for the distribution of the same we have women who are earning livelihood and changing the lives of others by giving them awareness on hygiene and good health.
","question":""}]}
