Menstrual Hygiene in Rural India

devika kumar's girl scouts gold award project.

[menstrual-hygiene]

day one

Rajasthan is really, extremely hot. We recover from jet lag, and we go see where the machine will be held, but it didn’t have the right electrical outlets, and wasn’t clean enough. I was extremely nervous and this didn’t help. You can buy a $4,500 machine, but you need somewhere to put it. So having this first obstacle was actually the scariest because I felt like I was already letting everyone down. I actually cried, and I didn’t expect that to happen until much later. I felt that things weren’t the way that I pictured in my head, and that people were relying on me, and everything had to be perfect. Until I found out, it didn’t. My family and relatives and strangers in the village all moved to help fix this issue. A stranger lent his house to me. I was actually so touched, and Saloni told me assured me that my stress was getting to me, that things were going to be just fine. And as a younger sister always does, I didn’t believe her. 

walking in the village next to my aunt, and maybe this can also reflect the whole light at the end of the tunnel I needed to walk into. 

After this, we found a more permanent solution. The former head of the five villages, an extremely respected man and also a close relative to my father offered his house, but we didn’t want to take his home from him. There was however, an empty house right next to him, where at least 300 giant bags of garlic were being stored on the first floor. On the second floor, it was completely empty, and had electrical sockets and ample light. 

I’d like to say that I was the one who held my head high when the going got tough, and yelled “Onward, men!” But I wasn’t. I was immature and frantic, but watching my sister be the model of the way I should’ve acted has my perspective changed. We had two entirely different attitudes of the same situation, and she had a more positive experience than me. So no, I didn’t start out as the glowing leader, but this whole adventure definitely made sure I will be next time.  

[menstrual-hygiene]

let’s get down to business

except not to defeat the huns.

We arrive in Rajasthan, take a five hour train ride to Bhavani Mundi and an hour cramped in a car to Jhalawar. And oh my god, it is so hot. It’s frustrating that there is no easy connectivity by plane or something, but if there were, I guess there would be no need for the project here. The quality of the roads in India is extremely poor, but my stomach felt queasy because of nerves more than the bumps of the road.

a map of Rajasthan, in the northwest of India along the border with Pakistan. The district of Jhalawar is the most southeast in the light green. We actually flew into the nearest major airport in Indore, which is in Madhya Pradesh, the state just south of Jhalawar.

Here I am with my trusty Tevas!  my caption for this one on my Instagram was “packed in the back with the backpacks” :))))

if you can see the background at all, it’s just minimal vegetation and dusty, arid ground. But hey, we’re here. And it’s happening. (nerves nerves nerves nerves.)

[menstrual-hygiene]

the motherland

well with everything set to go, the machine having arrived at Dityakhedi, our bags packed and my ACT and SAT subject tests studied for, we flew to India making a stop at London Heathrow because the universe seems to dislike when we fly and so we were delayed in Heathrow for a couple hours. I got to catch up on my sleep though. We spend the first week visiting my mom’s brother and sister respectively. It was awesome to spend time around my family and catch up, however short time we had. I think it was definitely necessary to do the vacation-y stuff in India before going to do the project, for which everyone seemed really excited, or nervous, like me. 

a mouth full of mangoes, with my baby cousin (2 yrs) in Mumbai, after long flights.

[menstrual-hygiene]

deeper than money

a song by the rapper Logic, how I feel about this project. So we know it’s an expensive machine. And at this point I hadn’t heard from any businesses, but I had told family and friends about it and they were willing to donate their hard-earned money for my possible failure of a project!!! seriously what a crazy idea. 

An idea that several others had too, and I came to realize it was because they believed in my cause, believed in me, and wanted to do something good. I recently read in TIME Magazine’s issue of 240 Reasons to Celebrate America that this country is one to give the most to charity. I really saw this as I set up  my GoFundMe and asked people to donate. 

At first I was extremely shy and embarrassed when my parents asked our family friends for money. I, myself, felt like a shameless salesperson, because heck, I don’t even like going door to door asking people to buy Girl Scout Cookies. My parents then told me that this project was deeper than money, and people loved to donate for a good cause. Which is what we were enabling them to do. 

this is the home page for my GoFundMe, which Girl Scouts has recently allowed us to use for Money Earning. As you can see, people donated and shared and it meant so so much to me that even my sister’s broke college friends donated the $10 dollars they could. To me, this was way deeper than the money, this was emotional support; people believed in me and my cause and that meant I could do it. 

On top of that, we worked with the council to be able to have our friends send the checks made out to the council so they would be tax exempt. We filled out for financial sponsorship forms for each and scanned each, logging them in a spreadsheet. In total, we got $4,509.00 (not to mention the P. Terry’s gift card) and I’m truly totally incredulous. If you donated, and you’re reading this, I love you. 

[menstrual-hygiene]

???? unanswered

I’m not sure if you can read this, but this was part of my proposal processing. As you can see, I was seriously unsure of what I was doing. Looking back on this, it’s kind of crazy just to see how far this project has come!!! 

I was basing a lot of this information off what my scatter-brained dad had told me as he contacted the former head of the five villages, also a close and respected relative. Lots of ????? filled my head. And I also used this to document my thoughts. 

“how to push at the cultural characteristic of modesty?? and make them realize this isn’t a disease nor is it sexual, but a biological process and it’s not! their! fault! for needing pads!”

- thoughts

[menstrual-hygiene]

money on my mind

a sam smith song, actually what’s going on in my head. How does one girl raise $4,500 without non-profit status, or even a tax-ID, whatever that is?? And really I didn’t know what that was until I started researching grants and what I knew through common knowledge, and at first I thought big. I thought:

P&G

SC Johnson

Dove

Edgewell (Stayfree & Playtex)

Unilever 

Bill & Melinda Gates

Seton

And then I figured out that these people don’t just hand money out to people. Which, yeah, was a surprise to me. So I went smaller, looked into Chuy’s, Amy’s, the OMNI hotel downtown, and I started filling out donation request forms. 

it’s hard to see, but these are all business like that, whom my family contacted through their information on the right. We logged the amount we asked for, the amount received, the date, who emailed, the website, the email, and the phone number. 

Like this we got a total of:

$25!!!!! Which yes I’m thankful for, so shoutout to P. Terry’s!!! Thanks for giving back to the community in an accessible way and for having good burgers! But seriously, this was kind of a flop.

this is the advertising I do for you if you give me money for my project!!! others should’ve really taken this offer up...

[menstrual-hygiene]

proposing

So I do this funny thing called processing, where I lay out my thought in bullets and paragraphs and words. I took the questions from the official proposal off the girl scouts website and started processing them in my head. 

I figure out where I’m going with this and I do some research, what I want to say, and I put it in the proposal. I submitted the proposal through email, only to find out that I had used the wrong form. 

A fillable PDF from the Girl Scouts USA website, not the central texas chapter’s website. I printed the PDF in order to get it signed by my troop leader, and scanned it in order to email it to the council. I found that form and I could only edit it through a word processor, so I had to use my mom’s computer and an OCR (optic character recognition) program to turn the PDF into text and then send an email of each response one by one. 

That was a struggle.

But I got through it and sent the proposal in. I was told to revise somethings, as was expected, and elaborate on others. Meanwhile, my mom has to hurry and tell her hospital when she’ll be gone so they can reschedule her patients. My dad has to book plane tickets. 

I decide it’s better to use my words and answer questions by going to the center for a 10-minute slot and talk to the council. I presented my proposal and it felt good to know that they were equally excited about this project. They told me to go ahead and book the tickets! And that I had to tweak some other things on my proposal, but soon it would be approved!

[menstrual-hygiene]

origin stories

I listened to Arunachalam Muruganantham’s TED talk, as I was looking for a project in my community, I thought to redefine my community and use his machine in India, but I didn’t think it was feasible. How would I set up a $4,500 contraption I know nothing about to make pads in India, like a factory? I decided to get in contact with Jayashree Industries because I definitely feel passionate about the cause. Because menstruation is never talked about in India, and women are shamed here and there especially, for a biological process they cannot control. Infections can be prevented and I can’t imagine my life without the basic hygiene during my period. Isn’t it obvious that every woman should have access to sanitary pads and shouldn’t be ashamed to ask for them? That’s why I did this. 

this is me, in Dityakhedi, a colorful village with colorful, amazing people.