Welingkar students help poor women maintain proper menstrual hygiene

One out of every five women has menstruation related problems caused due to poor hygiene. Hence, to to create awareness for maintaining proper menstrual hygiene, four students from LN Welingkar Institute of Management Development & Research, Matunga came up with a project on theme "Sensitizing Sanitation" for a competition organised by the Mumbai University.

The project has not just taught women from economically weaker section (EWS) about how to make affordable sanitary napkins at home, but also how to dispose it without creating an unhealthy surrounding.

The students came across the health issues due to improper menstrual hygiene of EWS women in the slum area. This forced them to come up with affordable sanitary napkins for the EWS women. The team of four named Sanjeevani comprised Kalpana Patel, Snehal Joshi, Chaitali Kulkarni and Payal Soni. They divided themselves into two groups and approached two different areas in Thane Khopat area and Jogeshwari where Prayaas NGO works with underprivileged children. The faculty guiding the students on the project was Dr Priyanka Sharma.

Sanjeevani stood first in Mumbai University New Initiative for Joint Action Now (MUNIJAN) competition for which the theme was "Sensitizing Sanitation". It is an initiative to inspire collegians to contribute towards the society.
"When we met the women from those areas we came to know that most of them are shy to approach the pharmacists to buy the sanitary napkins because there are men at the counter," said Kalpana.

Echoing similar sentiments, Chaitali, another team member, said: "The women from Thane and Jogeshwari slums live in small houses. The cloth they use for menstruation cycle is dried in a same small room that keeps the cloth moist and use of that could lead to infections."

According to the study done by Sanjeevani poor protection and inadequate washing facilities may increase susceptibility to infection, with the odour of menstrual blood putting girls at risk of being stigmatized.

While some women wrap the napkins in plastic or paper and throw it along with domestic garbage, some flush or throw them into water bodies. One major issue of sanitary waste has always been their categorization i.e. whether it is biomedical or plastic waste. Waste pickers separate out soiled napkins from recyclable items by hand, exposing themselves to micro-organisms like E Coli, salmonella, staphylococcus, HIV and pathogens that cause hepatitis and tetanus.

Snehal, another team member, said: "Even if the sanitary napkins are used by these women they throw in a garbage that gets mixed up with biodegradable waste which is again not a good sign. Hence, we decided to teach them how to make sanitary napkins at home from cardboard and unused cloths and how to dispose it and where."

Payal, the fourth member of the team, said: "It took us two weeks to work on this project. Now, we will again visit those areas to see the response of women. In fact we have come to know that more and more women are interested to learn it from us in different areas."

Prof Salunkhe, group director, said: "The MUNIJAN is one such initiative where students connect with ground realities and work towards finding real-time sustainable and scalable solutions for the problems of the society. Such initiatives have the power to transform lives and lend true meaning to education. We are happy that the students chose to work on sanitary hygiene project which is sensitive, critical and often an excluded one. The Institute takes pride in their achievement, will encourage and support them to take their ideas and cause further. "

Dr Sanjay Deshmukh, vice chancellor, University of Mumbai, said: "We need to skill-enable and knowledge-enable our youth by getting them to dream. MUNIJAN movement of the University of Mumbai aims to ignite young minds for fostering innovation based societal development."