The Udaiprakash Peace Foundation (UPF) based in Jaipur has been conducting menstrual hygiene awareness campaigns and sanitary pad distribution programs under the UPF Shakti initiative for the underprivileged in various cities and villages of India. For the past 18 months, they have been donating sanitary pads to over 12,000 poor girls and women each month to educate them about menstrual hygiene. UPF is self-funded in this initiative.
For International Women’s Day, they organized a massive sanitary pad distribution program from February 24 to March 08, 2023 in order to raise awareness among the general public. They distributed 400,000 sanitary pads by March 8.
On 1 March, UDF conducted a menstrual hygiene campaign for over 1,000 girls aged 9-18 years at the Keshav Vidyapeeth Samiti College and School. The campaign included awareness raising as well as distribution of sanitary pads. This was followed by the same to over 600 school girls at both Kachhi Basti as well as Jhalana Doongri in Jaipur then moving to Betma Nagar (2,000 women and girls) and to Deoli, Tonk, Kota, Bundi, Jhalarpatan, Raipur, Khizarpur, Tarana, Ujjain, Dewas, and Indore.
In Betma Nagar, the Foundation distributed 2.5 lakh pads to over 10,000 underprivileged girls and women.
The objective of organizing this awareness journey is to raise awareness about menstruation and related issues in a big way across the country. Due to insufficient knowledge about menstruation, many girls and women go through hardships which in turn affect their physical and mental health. Smt. Arju Sharma, Director, UPF believes that “through this journey we will break myths and social taboos which is still now prevalent in the male-dominated society and proper knowledge of it will stop women from hiding themselves at home. A healthy woman makes a healthy family, which in turn makes a healthy nation. We are positive that more than 100,000 women will be benefited through this endeavor which will lead towards nation building by empowering girls and women from poorer sections of our society.”
UPF plans to continue the yatra through 14 additional areas to achieve the goal of raising mass scale awareness for this issue.
UPF thanked Dr. Ishita Agarwal, Dr. Niketa Chotai, Mr. Kapil Sharma, and Mrs. Asha Sharma, Ms. Poonam and Dr. Vijayan Loganathan for their valuable advice and support.