Girls Glory - Improve Menstrual Health in India

Dear Girl’s Glory supporter, 

We are delighted to share our latest activities from the last three months in this new project with you. First of all, THANK YOU for being a part of this project from the start! It is truly remarkable how far $10/£6 can go in making a difference to girls’ lives by creating awareness about sanitary hygiene, which in turn will benefit her health, education, and rights! 

The project is shaping well as we have been getting excellent support from our stakeholders in terms of their time, skill and resources. We have started this project couple of months ago but have been getting some incredible remarks & feedback from our well-wisher and volunteers. We are planning to start an online global campaign so that everybody is aware about the issue and take this movement forward. The aim of this project is to make sure that the girl children is regularly attending school with confidence and dignity and not dropping out because of their monthly cycle. 

School Year begins… 

The school year has begun and the planning for Menstrual Health sessions are well underway! The program will be delivered through an active network of trained community members and volunteers who give their time, skills and experiences. This will consist of one-hour sessions which will take place in the schools to girls of 6th Standard and above and each new year-group. The sessions will include; a short video, volunteers sharing own experiences, an engaging activity and an opportunity for students to ask questions. This will be followed by the distribution - where the girls will receive sanitary napkins and by which point, will have already been taught how to use them correctly. 

A Great Start! 

We have been busy spreading the word about Girls Glory and it has been met with fantastic response! A huge thank you to the Rotary Club Jeevanbima Nagar, Bangalore for sponsoring 750 packs of sanitary napkins – enough to support 32 girls for an entire year! We are now providing our New Home girls with these napkins also! 

We have also held several stalls at corporate companies, such as Unilever and HP, where we are spreading awareness of this issue and hope to engage many future volunteers! 

The Bangalore TCS 10K Marathon on the 18^th May was a huge success, and we would like to say a warm hearted thank you to all who sponsored a Care Champion or ICare runner! Of course a huge thank you to all our fundraisers for the event including Derek Dsouza, Patrick Pitchappa, D.V Krishnan, Ansh Jain, Kumar Raju, Suresh Joel, and Emily Parkes! This is always the biggest event of the year, and this time we were a strong team of over 150 volunteers who ran in the 10K, Majja run (5.7K) and Kingfisher (fancy dress) competition! They all ran to support our Girls Glory project that aims to impact more than 400 girls this year who are studying in the government schools. 

A Special Visit 

The Reaching Hand team made a very special exposure visit at the beginning of June to see the Hoskote factory (20km North East of Bangalore) where affordable sanitary napkins are made! We visited the Mythri factory and watched the process unfold before our eyes as the women were preparing the raw material to the final product! It takes approximately 2.5 minutes to make each sanitary napkin, a relatively quick process that involves three women working at a time. This small factory is able to support 17 women from the village with a stable income working part time.

We are raising funds for this machine so that we can manufacture the napkins locally, have enough capacity for growth, so that we may reach out to over 25,000 girls in the next 5 years, and provide employment for underprivileged women in our area! The estimated cost of one machine with raw material is more than 3.5 lacs ($6,000/ £3,500). 

Thank you once again for your kind support. Please follow us on Facebook for regular updates on Reaching Hand’s work - https://www.facebook.com/ReachingHand