I remember about a year ago when I was in a rural community of Nepal (Dhading District, Nepal) for the Community Health Diagnosis program (Along with the National Academy for Medical Sciences); I saw the least attendance of girl students in public school. I researched the reason behind the problem and found that due to the lack of proper school safety during her monthly period.
Even there was no proper toilet for the girl students in school. Everything was destroyed by the earthquake in 2015. They could not afford the commercial sanitary pads, and it hampered their academic life too. It sparked me and I decided to work on this issue. I started a voluntary program to make a free of cost sanitary pad in those public schools with the coordination of various local organizations. I also have been advocating for the Government of Nepal and made a commitment between various public schools to provide them free cost sanitary pads. I had a discussion session in many forums, talked with NGOs, and even had a conversation with local governmental officials. At the same time, I trained, elevated, and empowered the thousands of youth and adolescents through 100+ school health programs all over the country to catalyze action for Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights in Nepal.
Today, the Government of Nepal has been allocated a budget within the health care system to provide free of cost Sanitary Pads to all the girls from public schools. We have partially succeeded in achieving our goal. They took our recommendations and put them into the policy in 2019. That was our small effort and now we won our agenda at the national level. They are successfully implementing a full school health safety for girl students during her monthly period by providing free of cost sanitary pads.
That was not only our voices, however, many people were also fighting to make easily accessible sanitary pads for free of cost in all public schools in Nepal and which also increased the school attendance of girl students during her monthly period. It was a great achievement of our advocacy actions in the field of health and rights of girls and women to advance gender equality.
Please follow the link: https://thehimalayantimes.com/kathmandu/free-sanitary-pads-for-public-schools/
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