MS. Deepthi Angara
Title: Empowerment of Adolescent Girls in Menstrual Hygiene
Organization:
Padala Charitable Trust
About the Program:
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It is an awareness programme carried out in all government and zilla parishad schools to increase the awareness of menstrual hygiene and related health education in adolescent girls.
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By this Programme we empower the girl children in the areas of:
Improving menstrual hygiene , personal hygiene , health and diet
Usage of Sanitary Napkins and their disposal
Educating the parents to follow safe and healthy methods during the cycle
Our Reach:
We have been conducting this program for last 8 months in government high schools & colleges of East Godavari District, AP & Mahbubnagar District, TS. Until now, we have covered 50+ schools and reached out to 5,000 girl children.
Testimonials:
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“We are so empowered with this session and feel much more comfortable with our body. We are now buying the sanitary pads from Padala Charitable Trust and using every month. Please conduct this programme in our community for our mothers and grandmothers. They are so ignorant of the facts and suffer a lot during the menstrual cycle”. – Nagalakshmi Meleti, ZP High School, Chandrampalem, Kakinada Rural
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“Our girls are very much comfortable and confident of speaking out about this and they have started buying the napkins for themselves and their mothers. This proves the power of being aware. ThaFirsl Menstrual Hygienenks to Padala Charitable Trust for working on such a worthy cause to educate the future mothers of India. Thank You”. – Teachers & Head Masters
Lessons Learnt:
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This subject is still treated as taboo in most of the families including the ones with educated parents. The girls have no access to reliable and complete information and hence they end up growing with half knowledge lot of and misconceptions
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Though few girls are able to buy and use the sanitary napkins after they get motivated with the awareness session, there are several girls in each school who cannot afford to buy these napkins. Someone has to help them out.
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Though the teachers appreciate our effort in motivating the children, none of them comes forward to volunteer in our attempt. We even offer free training for them.
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The school administration may not be willing to welcome these kinds of sessions even though it benefits the children a lot and we offer for free.
