Women & Girls, Health & Hygiene, Nepal

https://healinghandsnepal.org/projects/health-sanitation/

Menstrual Hygiene Management Awareness Program to Adolescents girls

Healing Hands Nepal


Under "Women & Girl's Health & Hygiene" Healing Hands Nepal conducts a “Menstrual Hygiene Management Awareness Program” to support and strengthen the capacity of schools girls in managing menstrual hygiene in Parbat, Gorkha and Lamjung districts of Nepal, with a vision to educate girls to effectively manage and sustain menstrual hygiene and sanitation practices whenever and wherever they are. Plus these girls must commit themselves to support other girls within and outside the school i.e the communities/other schools in collaboration with women teachers to share the knowledge of intimate hygiene.

Besides Awareness Program HHN also refills Feminine Sanitary kits lasting for 6 months to ‘All Girls Club’ at the schools, who collect funds monthly, to provide sanitary napkins to fellow girls pupil. To augment further towards health and hygiene, HHN provides MHM booklets for the school library, a special-containers installed at girls toilet for appropriate disposal of used pads and if funds allow, the incinerators to promote environment-friendly disposal.

Nepalese has yet to understand that the Menstruation is not a taboo but only a natural and normal biological process experienced by all adolescent girls and women, which is not something to be embarrassed about. It is, in fact, an integral part of human life and their existence. At this time one needs to keep girls healthy and sanitized, which is their birthright, and it is also important to understand that menstruation hygiene enables women and girls to reach life’s fullest potential.

Nepalese is accustomed to many negative cultural attitudes associated with the menstruation like menstruating women and girls are impure/contaminated and they should be banished from kitchen, temples and even from the house to a nearby shelter, often a shed, called Chaupadi, for the 4 days. The Chaupadi is a norm in far Western Nepal but not to that degree at rest of the country. Any kind of banishment practised is a root cause of physical and psychological pain in the growing up age.

Girls in schools suffer the most from stigma. It is further worsened by inadequate preparations for the young girls not yet experiencing menstrual hygiene, lack of or inadequate water to clean and wash the body, lack of materials managing menstrual hygiene, private space and washrooms and inappropriate facilities for disposal of materials for those who have used pads. In spite of these issues, menstrual hygiene has been routinely ignored.