DISHA

The idea that menstruation is dirty, shameful and unmentionable keeps girls and women away from school and out of the workforce. A woman without access to sanitary products may have to stay at home during her periods, while a garment worker risks losing her job for getting off to change her pad before break time, provided there are facilities for her to manage her menstruation at all. Even women working in office environments and girls in schools with conveniently located toilets and flexible schedules go to great lengths to hide periods. Our societies need to be re-educated about menstruation, re-frame its purpose and allow women to be women without any stigma.

If open conversation erodes taboos, this project offers one way to get people talking and be re-educated about menstrual health and hygiene. Such conversations and education can't be designed by men for women or by women for women; both men and women need to participate in designing, implementing and monitoring conversations and education around menstrual health and hygiene. In this regarding, the project seeks explore alternative Menstruation Education models in youth workers perspectives to catalyze and facilitate them in integrating menstruation education in the overall youth work. Thus, we seek to develop menstruation educational tools which are structured around young people's engagement in the learning process to meet their learning expectations on menstrual health and hygiene.

Project’s intellectual outputs: a handbook and guidelines on menstruation education in youth work and related pedagogical materials with be produced for young people to acquire knowledge, skills and attitudes about menstrual health, hygiene, female body, period management, relationships, sexual practices, sexuality, etc. through empowerment, capacity building and advocacy; delivered in non-formal educational setting to develop dynamic activities in such a way that knowledge, skills and attitudes are learned and perfected through practice.