By Nisha Kumari | Project Coordinator
Dear Friends,
Greetings from Indian Dreams Foundation!
Globally, the lack of accessible and affordable female hygiene products has been known to have far-reaching implications on the social, psychological and physical health of teenage girls and young women. The subject of menstruation, however, is too often taboo, and has many negative cultural attitudes associated with it, including the idea that menstruating women and girls are “contaminated”, “dirty” and “impure”. Women and girls in rural areas, and in particular girls in schools suffer most from stigma and lack of services and facilities to help them cope with the physical and psychological pains they undergo during their menstrual periods. There is weak guidance for young girls who are unaware of maintaining good menstrual hygiene and this is further compounded by a lack of or inadequate water to clean and wash the body. There is also a glaring lack of materials for managing menstrual hygiene, private space and washrooms, and inappropriate facilities for the disposal of sanitary napkins.
Our project SMILEY DAYS aims to promote menstrual hygiene knowledge & information through different sets of creative activities and engage more stakeholders with the project.
Smiley Days team conducts cluster meetings in underserved communities at the regular interval while targeting adolescent girls and women to disseminate knowledge on menstruation, hygiene practices during periods and old-aged myths associated with periods.
Under this project, girls from ages 12 to 20 are targeted beneficiaries and the focus point is to spread awareness of MHM.
Our team collects testimonials from the beneficiaries regularly. Below is mentioned the testimonial of the adolescent girls who came during the cluster meeting.
“I feel really embarrassed during my period days. I think many girls like me are afraid to talk about periods even with our mothers also but when we come to school. We hide our talks related to periods. That seems we are doing crime. I am lucky to attend the session on MHM with my other community friends. Today we gained lots of knowledge on Period hygiene and also understand why does period hygiene important! I thank team Smiley Days for conducting such an informative session with girls like me”.
says Poonam (name changed), a schoolgirl.
We will continue to keep you updated about our work and events.
Many thanks again for your support!
Regards,
IDF Team
By Jyoti Singh | Project Lead
By Jyoti Singh | Project Lead
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