Ask her if she used to miss school on days she had her periods, and Shalu Gaikwad’s response is prompt. “I never used to go to school. I remember days on my period as being spent just sitting on a bench.”
Ms. Gaikwad, now 34, is part of a self-help group in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra, with 12 other women. She has recently used Saafkins, a sanitary napkin in product testing and pilot stage, and will now introduce her self-help group to it.
Like Ms. Gaikwad’s school years, many young girls have gaps because of poor menstrual health. The Give Her 5 campaign by Livinguard Technology, creator of the Saafkins, aims to address exactly that: it will give girls five days of school back; five full days spent attending school and not sitting at home on a bench. A Saafkins pad can be worn for 12 hours comfortably, can then be washed, dried, and used again. Through online donations, people can contribute amounts beginning at ₹150, which will buy a set of two Saafkins. Livinguard’s NGO partners will then distribute these for free among those they work with, especially self-help groups like Ms. Gaikwad’s. The campaign aims at keeping users in school for a year — since the Saafkins pads are reusable for one year.
WOTR (Watershed Organisation Trust), an NGO based in Pune, is one of Livinguard’s NGO partners which work in distribution, with the backing of the Ammada Trust. WOTR has been distributing Saafkins to self-help groups in Ahmednagar and Beed districts for a month. Ms. Gaikwad’s self-help group was one of the first to try out the product. “I can’t emphasise how good the product was,” she says. “It was comfortable, there was no pain between my thighs like there usually is, there was no issue of leakage.”
Livinguard Technology, a Switzerland-based technology company, created a patented anti-bacterial technology eight years ago that they used for a variety of functions, including creating water filters. Ashok Kurien, founder of Ammada Trust, who has worked in the media for most of his career and now manages the trust, had backed projects in which Livinguard provided water filters to clean water projects, including YES Bank’s water purification project last year in Maharashtra. It occurred to him that the same technology could be used to create anti-bacteria textiles for sanitary napkins, which could then be distributed to India’s rural women. “When marketing standard sanitary napkins, people often say, ‘forget about the 80% of the country who can’t afford them’,” he says. “But why should we forget about them?”
How it works
Saafkins’ production began in Navi Mumbai in late 2015. The product has undergone eight trial stages, and is currently in its ninth. All the individual layers of fabric are treated with this technology. They are then assembled on a series of machines. A layer of cotton is attached to a layer of viscose polymer, and sealed; then, protective layers of thin plastic and polyurethane are added below it; finally, elastic is strung through the top so that it can be worn as underwear. Right now, Livinguard works with seven organisations in Maharashtra — WOTR is its biggest order, at 1,000 pieces — and the others, including Apnalaya and Magic Bus, are working on pilot projects. These will, as pilot projects, distribute pads funded by Give Her 5. They receive a few orders from the rest of the country on a sample basis, too.
NGOs work to distribute the product using their local expertise, often allying with self-help groups to spread the word.
“The work of Saafkins has begun recently, as one of our health interventions under Sampada, the sister trust of WOTR that works on rural women’s livelihoods and health,” said Marcella D’Souza, executive director, WOTR. “But for a long time, we have been looking at the need for promoting sanitary hygiene.” A few years ago, WOTR came up with cloth-based menstrual wear, but that was not the answer. Nor were regular disposable pads, since in rural areas, disposal is a problem, as well as affordability. WOTR then began using Saafkins as a trial, with initial samples, and women took to it. “Earlier, women used to use cloth, which would cut them on the thigh; it would hurt their fingers to wash. This brought a lot of ease,” says Ms. D’Souza.
“Depending on how we promote the first batch, we can place a larger order,” she says. WOTR is focusing on Ahmednagar and Beed districts, where they have worked for a long time, as well as Jalna and Vidarbha. It will also begin promotion in 44 villages in Madhya Pradesh where its team is active, and in Jharkhand.
“We are waiting and watching in this stage of product development, but I have a feeling it will pick up. I know how women feel. They just want an easy solution,” says Ms. D’Souza. Mostly, as Ms. Gaikwad says, they want to be able to get their periods without the attendant tension. “I hope other girls know they don’t have to suffer like I did,” she says.
(Donations can be made at www.giveher5.org )
