Encouraging women to talk

Youngistaan Foundation celebrated World Menstrual Hygiene day, under its Women of Courage’ programme, with an evening of laughter and poetry at Alt Space, Heart Cup Cafe, Jubilee Hills recently.

The evening which was peppered with laughter and slam poetry got the full house guffawing as well as thinking about what continues to remain a taboo even today - the completely natural occurrence of a period.

The event titled ‘Period’ was a one-hour show hosted by Sharon Aamir. The show began with a question and answer session on menstruation which saw men in the crowd too participate enthusiastically.

The slam poets, Shrutika Choudhary, Dristhi Nagda and Mahek Jagda took to stage and ensured the dialogue on menstruation reached a tempo. The poetry ended on an emphatic note with Mahek's affirmation "So I now say without fear, I am on my period. I wear pads. I bleed,” which was like a message to all the women who are ashamed to talk about their period.

As a follow up to this event, the Women of Courage programme will be conducting awareness sessions on menstrual hygiene as well as child sexual abuse in government schools, slums and orphanages. The foundation will also be distributing close to 20,000 sanitary napkins to women, who don’t have access to it, across the city.

Women of courage is a one-year old programme and the idea of Arun Daniel Yellamaty who always wanted to focus on issues related to women and empower them. His idea of empowering women about menstruation and educating the girl child about sexual education has helped many girls living in slums and villages.

Speaking about Women of courage Arun said, “We have activities conducted by our volunteers every weekend where we approach villages and slum areas to educate them about menstrual hygiene.

Eventually, the hope is that people will be comfortable enough to discuss periods without cringing or whispering. Not many people know that about 23 percent girls in India drop out of school because of menstruation-related issues. We need to start talking and start doing something to dispel the taboo at the grassroots level, which is what Women of Courage programme does regularly.”

“We encourage young volunteers to join hands and take this initiative ahead,” he adds. Shalini one of the coordinators of Women of courage said, “Our initial plan is to join hands with cooperate companies for the vending machines to be installed at the slum areas. We are also starting the concept of distributing cloth pads.

Apart from sharing knowledge about menstrual hygiene we also educate these girls about the good touch and bad touch. We have big plans relating to women of courage. As of now we conduct eight sessions per month in different slum areas, we are planning on conducting such events on regular basis.”