By Youth Alliance:
Take a moment today. Here, right now, just stop. We, as a nation, in a much celebrating manner recognize childbirth as a woman’s domain. Why not then, can we embrace the fact that women menstruate? We rejoice and celebrate those nine months of pregnancy but what about the rest of a woman’s life journey where the significance of life flows out of her? Why is she then, a victim of myths and taboos? Instead of dreading their menses, early humans cherished the uterus and women’s cycles of menstruation, Pregnancy, birth and menopause and celebrated the uterus as the body’s center of Female power and creativity.
It is out of question then, that this periods’ related discrepancy is NOT perpetual and ancestral. What happened then? Where did we lose the way? Or rather paved new paths? Think about all those times when the shopkeeper wrapped up your sanitary napkin in a newspaper and put it in a black packet before he gave it to you as if it were some kind of a bomb. Think about the times where perhaps you or your female counterpart kept standing outside the temple or a mosque. These are the generalities. There are places where women have never went out and bought a sanitary pad on their own from the market, shying away from the male shopkeeper. There are cases, worse still, where women haven’t even used a sanitary napkin considering ‘wasting’ money on it to be irrelevant. Only 12% of Indian women have access to sanitary napkins. But today we are not here to deal with these issues. We are here to start slow but make it big. We are here to embrace womanhood. The moment’s over and now, today, we at ONUS, Youth Alliance are making an effort to eliminate the evil myths regarding menstruation that play in the shadow of our hearts.
Youth Alliance has collaborated with Goonj, the expert in the field with their initiative “Not Just A Piece of Cloth” to take the issue of lack of access to sanitary pads and menstrual hygiene to the university and proudly announces #Five Days of Dignity”, whereby we shall solemnly try to break the shackles which shackles woman every month. Our program is majorly centered at two colleges- Hindu and Jesus Marry College. Our initiative will involve sensitive street plays, a simulation drive where we will make sanitary napkins in our college campuses, dialogue with eminent personalities where people will get a chance to speak openly about menstruation through a discussion forum. It will also involve street interviews where we shall ask random questions about menstruation just to reach out to the discomfort on this issue. We vouch to make a change; do you care to be the change? Please be the support we are seeking. Join us in our campaign.
Our five days are our dignity. What are your five days like?
Join us on 3, 5, 7 Nov in Hindu and Jesus and Mary College.
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