Under the UPF Shakti initiative, the Udaiprakash Peace Foundation (UPF) has been doing sanitary pad distribution programmes and campaigns to raise awareness of menstruation hygiene for the impoverished in various Indian towns and villages. Around 12,000 underprivileged women and girls have received monthly sanitary pads donations from them for the past 18 months in an effort to teach them about menstruation hygiene. This project is self-funded by UPF.

They planned a significant sanitary pad distribution initiative from February 24 to March 8, 2023, in honour of International Women’s Day to increase public awareness. By March 8, they had delivered 400 000 pads.

On 1 March, UDF conducted a menstrual hygiene campaign for over 1,000 girls aged 9-18 years at the Keshav Vidyapeeth Samiti College and School. The campaign included awareness raising as well as distribution of sanitary pads. This was followed by the same to over 600 school girls at both Kachhi Basti as well as Jhalana Doongri in Jaipur the moving to Betma Nagar (2,000 women and girls) and to Deoli, Tonk, Kota, Bundi, Jhalarpatan, Raipur, Khizarpur, Tarana, Ujjain, Dewas, and Indore.

In Betma Nagar, the Foundation distributed 2.5 lakh pads to over 10,000 underprivileged girls and women.

The objective of organizing this awareness journey is to raise awareness about menstruation and related issues in a big way across the country. Due to insufficient knowledge about menstruation, many girls and women go through hardships which in turn affect their physical and mental health.

UPF will continue the yatra through 14 additional areas to achieve the goal of raising mass scale awareness for this issue.

For more details, visit: www.udaiprakashfoundation.org.

Priyanka Dutta