Bengaluru pitches for ‘Period Fellowship’ to educate 1 million girls about menstrual hygiene

NewsBharati    01-Feb-2018
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Bengaluru, February 1: Bengaluru has kick-started its unique initiative ‘Period Fellowship’ to educate girls in different regions of the country about menstrual hygiene. This is first of its kind initiative to empower girls and women. ‘Period Fellowship’ aims to educate one million girls. 

The Period Fellowship started by Sukhibhava is a year-long programme which will train 40 individuals from diverse fields. The programme is scheduled to begin on May 15 and following a three-week training course; the candidates will be placed in the regions allotted to them.

“After their training, five fellows will be placed in each region with a programme coordinator. It is a paid fellowship programme where each fellow is paid Rs 30,000 per month,” explained Dilip Kumar Pattubala, Co-Founder of Sukhibhava.

The fellowship will focus on four cities, i.e., Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Pune, and four districts of Karnataka, i.e., Kalaburagi, Hubballi, Belagavi and Mysuru.

“There are so many menstrual hygiene organizations which have been formed in the last decade. But there is not a single organization that has touched a million lives till date. The fellowship is focusing on large scale impact in a short time,” he added.

“We feel that the Period Fellowship can become an entry point for a lot of dynamic individuals to actually experience the menstrual hygiene ecosystem in India and back their own initiatives at the end of the fellowship programme,” he stated.

From doctors to lawyers, journalists and social workers, professionals from diverse fields have applied for the fellowship. The NGO in turn hopes to use their skills in the most effective manner.

“In India, as soon as we talk about menstrual hygiene, people associate it with setting up sanitary pad manufacturing units and then distributing pads to girls and women. We, however, believe that the product is part of the issue and not the issue in its entirety. And unless we provide awareness to women, remove the stigma, increase accessibility to affordable products, we are not solving the problem in its entirety,” he said.