World Menstrual Hygiene Day 28th May.
Menstrual Hygiene Day (MHD,MH Day in short) is an annual awareness day on May 28 to highlight the importance of good menstrual hygiene management (MHM). It was initiated by the German-based NGOWASH United in 2014 and aims to benefit women and girls worldwide. The 28th was selected to acknowledge that 28 days is the average length of the menstrual cycle
The organizations like UNICEF, the Red Cross, World Vision and more organization to support for promoting Menstrual hygiene and awareness in Nepal. Our women group called “AAMA SAMUHA” and school’s girl directly benefited. Our society women group and school’s girl programme improves menstrual hygiene and awareness and school’s girl access education without difficulty, which in turn better future for girls in Nepal.
Since 2018 across Nepal we have directly connected more than 500 students about menstrual awareness. Our work is on process to improve many students and local womens in province 5.
Absence of students in classroom
Regular clean and separate girl’s toilets are very important for ladies students. Most of the rural and remote villages school’s are out of this services in Nepal. Also, use of Sanitary Pad is also very big issue for them because of not avaialbility and economy. Since Nepal Government has distributed free sanitary pad in community base School, there are many schools still out of this kind of offer. Therefore, many students are absence in school which are compelled to leave school during monthly periods.
Our main theme is “Don’t leave school due to menstrual issue”, as we say, so we are distributing Reusable Sanitary Pad and also train the students how to make a resuable sanitary pad, sharing the knowledge, attitudes, belief and practices menstrual hygiene.
Incident
Nepal is increasingly developed in many senses, however, there are still some things which are taken as ‘taboo’ in some religions and cultures specially “Chhaupadi” in far western part of Nepal. Every year we are hearing the news of death in spite of various organizations working on it.
A recent survey found that 90% of women in rural Nepal don’t use proper sanitary pad and don’t care about personal hygiene. So far 70% women in Nepal don’t share their things during her period.
First period of Students:
“Students of first menstrual experiences really dreadful. They always missed school due to cramps and lack of sanitary pad. This scenario take place every 3-4 days in a month about more than a million students can not join the class.”
In order to overcome above issues, we have been distributing reusable sanitary pad to many schools collaborate with many municipalities for female students and teachers. We also provide education on the subject of female reproductive system and menstrual hygiene management. Many positive feedbacks and suggestions from students made us proud which we felt “hard work never ruin”.
Some positive changes while organizing and distributing reusable sanitary pad programme:
• Drastically increased attendance rates in school.
• Gaining and sharing knowledge with their friends and families growth rate is high.
• Self confidence and self respect.
• Ease of talking menstrual issue.
The students who had used reusable sanitary pad provided and found them so comfortable and confidence that they never skipped their classes, finally, good results seen their education.
