‘Sanitary products – a need, not a luxury’: A campaign to help 7,000 women in Nagaland

Our Correspondent
Kohima, June 4 (EMN): Among the numerous lists of collateral damage inflicted by the Covid-19 lockdown across the globe, the United Nations Children’s Fund had recently identified the impact on menstrual health and hygiene as one of the primary concerns.

“Essential hygiene products are a priority for the health, dignity and welfare of all people who menstruate,” it had declared.

Consequently, few groups — Serendip Guardians, Our Young Voices and Humans of Nagaland – collaborated and launched an online campaign called ‘Sanitary products—a need, not a luxury’, on June 1 with an aim to donate sanitary pads to thousands of women in Nagaland.

Speaking to Eastern Mirror, Sekulu Nyekha, founder of Our Young Voices, said that the campaign was a joint initiative of the three groups.

“We are working to donate sanitary pads to 7000 women in Nagaland for three months. We are financing 60% and depending on public donation for the other 40%,” she explained.

When asked about the idea behind the campaign, Nyekha said: “When Serendip Guardians first brought up the idea, we all pitched in and decided to work on it collaboratively. The campaign is headed by them (Serendip Guardians). We are doing this because of the affordability and accessibility issues during the pandemic.”

“Just as hunger and thirst does not stop, period does not stop,” read the message of the campaign, making it loud and clear that though provisions have been made to provide essential commodities to people in need during the pandemic, very few include sanitary products.

It went on state that ‘the project came up from our own experience as fellow menstruator and the need to direct attention on marginalised problems as we suffer from accessibility and affordability issues’. “Period poverty is real, and at the face of pandemic it becomes a more pressing issue,” it asserted.

The project targets to donate sanitary pads to women in need in rural areas, quarantine centres, prison cells, labourers in need and to young women and girls who are unable to support themselves.

Serendip Guardians is an organisation that works for mental health with focus on psychological well-being and developing resilience among individuals, while Humans of Nagaland is a story-telling project that circles around real conversations with strangers as way to promote empathy and values of humanity.

Our Young Voices is a youth-led community that works towards ‘steering change while seeking to highlight and elicit dialogues on issues that, otherwise, go behind closed doors’.

People willing to help women in need can do so by either donating sanitary products or money to the campaigners.