Menstruation Dialogue

With an aim to spread awareness about the importance of menstrual hygiene, our team decided to visit Pandua village in Puri district of Odisha. During the visit we found out that most of the women there barely had any information around menstrual issues. They use cloth but maintenance of hygiene is usually overlooked. Also, our team observed that there were no bathrooms in the village and women had to bathe and change in the open.

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In a society which usually treats issues surrounding menstruation as a stigma and a taboo, the outlook of people of Rajasthan‘s Kharadi Phala village towards this subject is a testament to the positive change which is slowly, but steadily engulfing the country.

Situated approximately 70 km from Udaipur, Kharadi Phala houses around 290 families.

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When we started working in Bundelkhand, our utmost priority was to reach the tribes of the hilly remote areas, and Bharatpura is one such village in Lalitpur district of the region. During the pandemic, adhering to all health guidelines and needs, we had started our ‘Dignity For Work’ (DFW) initiative in the village where the community cleaned a modest patch of land and leveled it up with soil to make a playground for children.

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The unbearable trauma we can sense in the words of Shalu, Farzana, and thousands of nameless girls; the desperation, shame, unhealthy practices, compulsion, and painful silence that seems to be an inevitable outcome...

Cloth is a basic need of a woman as is her self-respect and dignity. It is this symbiotic relationship between the two that calls for, “Not just a piece of cloth”. So Goonj started with the simple activity — of making a clean cotton cloth available...

This deeply taboo issue has many impacts, which are still not part of the bigger discourse. This story touches upon some dimensions of how menstruation can be a monthly disaster for women...

Today, a discussion and debate is raging about the veracity and effects of the various sanitary pads available in the cities and in the villages of India. One thing is clear that many people still have doubts...