After Padman, here comes the Pad Fellow


He has helped self-help groups to sell over 15,000 pads in a dozen villages in Deoli.

Much before Akshay Kumar’s Padman created a buzz, in the small town of Deoli in Maharashtra’s’Wardha district, 31-year-old Prashant Sathe had been mobilising women from Self Help Groups (SHGs) to sell cotton pads and spread awareness about menstrual hygiene.

Mr. Sathe, a Fellow under the Chief Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship Programme, has managed to bring menstrual hygiene to the forefront in a place where the subject was never discussed. A testament to his success is the fact that since September last year, the SHGs have sold over 15,000 pads in about a dozen villages in Deoli.

“For my work under the Fellowship, I would conduct meetings with women’s groups in the village I was posted in. I noticed that there was rarely full attendance. As I probed, some women opened up and told me that they could not attend meetings on account of their periods,” said Mr. Sathe, who is posted in Bhidi Village. “I found out that women used cloth, which had its limitations. 

They preferred to sit in the confines of their homes rather than step out for their chores like they would on other days.”

Mr. Sathe decided it was important to introduce the women to sanitary napkins. “Firstly, they had no access to pads. And even if they did, they did not have the kind of money to buy it,” he said.....Read more

 

Source web page: The hindu


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