Period Adda Program

"23 million girls tend to drop out of school owing to unavailability of period friendly infrastructure and existing taboos around menstruation" according to a report by DASRA. In India, where menstruation is often treated as a something that is never openly accepted or even spoken of, Rangeen Khidki wants to change the perception of menstruation and how one experiences it.

Rangeen Khidki advocates for gender equity for all persons in the society to live a life of dignity and experience menstruation without stigma, taboos and superstitions. Menstruation is often seen as a shameful and tabooed topic that often impacts a girl’s access to education and fair opportunities. Millions of girls tend to annually drop out of schools and the education system because of lack of conducive infrastructure. Menstruating girls are expected to follow food restrictions, sometimes expected to live and sleep separately from the rest of the family and are made to feel ashamed about a normal and healthy biological process. This often affects a young girl’s acess to quality education, hampers her self confidence while growing up thus limiting her growth process and the we ought to now look at ways where we make menstruation a normal process.

Our key issue here is to understand how Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights(SRHR) and more specifically normal biological process like menstruation cannot be viewed in isolation without understanding how gender, sexuality, class, caste, religion, ethnicity, disability and mental health impacts it. Therefore, our initiative tries to look at menstruation beyond the ‘hygiene’ paradigm and delves deeper in to how menstruation exists in intersection with one’s social and economic identity, gender and sexuality

We are proposing to conduct interactive menstrual education sessions with 3 different groups:

1. Adolescents (both girls and boys- because we want to include boys in the conversations as well)
2. Parents of young girls
3. School Teachers in different schools
4. Local level organizations who are already working with young people

What these sessions cover:

1. Puberty
2. Know your body
3. Physiological Process of menstruation
4. Importance of nutrition and balanced diet
5. Busting myths and taboos around menstruation
6. Available products available in the market for menstrual flow management (use, disposal, cost, pros, cons etc)
7. Distribution of menstrual hygiene kits which would have basics like sample reusable cloth pads, informative leaflets, biodegradable pads, underwears, soaps etc)

Our Impact is two fold:

1. We create education among young girls and women about their own bodies, support them in busting age old myths and take better care of themselves. With the correct information, accessing their sexual and reproductive rights gets strengthened and they can advocate for better menstrual health services in their locality and pass on this information to the next generation.
2. We create a conducive environment for period friendly conversations at homes and schools by training the parents and teachers so that girls do not feel stigmatised or shamed because of being on periods and can continue their education. Schools will be more sensitive to the needs of their menstruating students and ensure supporting infrastructure in schools.

Through our program we are contributing in ending the cycle of period povery and school dropouts where school teachers, parents and young girls are made aware of menstruation as a natural process which leads to destigmatization leads to schools taking more responsibility to make schools period-friendly resulting in better attendance in schools, increased participation in daily activities in schools ad ultimately impacting the current as well as future generation as girls turn into mothers, friends, peers & inform the next generation & start advocating for themselves.