Srijan Foundation (SF) is a grassroots-level NGO based in Jharkhand, India. Since its inception in 2001, SF has been working directly with the communities, particularly with women, adolescents, and children, struggling with poverty, social exclusion, and gender injustice with a mission to “Create a Better World for Women and Children”. SF, particularly while working with adolescents, focuses on collectivizing, mobilizing, and strengthening adolescent girls through a Peer-led approach. We adopted a multi-pronged strategy to create an enabling environment by engaging and sensitizing the ecosystem of stakeholders like frontline workers, teachers, traditional, community, and religious leaders,- so that the girls can enjoy their rights and entitlements.

SF has been working in the district of Ramgarh, Hazaribagh, and Gumla with approximately reaching out to more than 60000 Adolescent Girls with an objective to build confidence in them, guide them to be better decision-makers, and increase communication among the stakeholders, and adolescent girls, and increased access to quality education.
While working in the community we have realized that adolescent girls are taught from childhood not to speak about menstruation as this is a bad thing and should be hidden from everyone, especially from the male members of the family. Apart from this they are taught and are imposed many restrictions during the five days period like not entering the kitchen, not going to the temple, not touching pickles, and so on. So they have grown up with many questions in their mind about menstruation but have always been hesitant to ask it to their mothers or any female family members as they were always taught it to be a bad or stigmatized thing. So this year we have thought to break the silence and stigma about menstruation and taking it to be a normal physiological phenomenon happening with a women’s body which is beautiful and can give birth to another life.

For this to happen we are planning to celebrate Menstrual Health and hygiene day on the 28th of May with the hashtag #WeAreCommitted #EndPeriodStigma with the objective to:

Break the stigma and myths related to menstruation
Awareness of different menstrual products, education, and menstruation
Awareness about maintenance of their personal hygiene during menstruation