A youth has started a social awareness drive about menstrual sanitation for the hygiene of poor women and girls in Uttar Pradesh’s Prayagraj. Abhishek Shukla has started a sanitary pad bank from where poor women receive six pads every month free of cost. This bank is the third pad bank of the state but the first such initiative in eastern Uttar Pradesh.
According to reports, more than 300 women and girls living in slums have benefited from this bank, which started on January 1, 2021.
Here’s how it operates: In this bank, accounts are opened in the name of women and girls using their photos and Aadhar cards. Aadhaar, however, is not mandatory. This ‘bank’ even has a sanitary pad ATM, which dispenses pads when operated.
The pad bank is named ‘Shuruat Sanitary Pad Bank’. However, this is not the only feat achieved by Shukla. He has been carrying on an educational campaign named “Shuruat Ek Jyoti Shiksha Ki” for the last five years for the children of the slums.
He had conducted a tour of the slum homes to take stock of the condition of the women and girls during menstruation. After doing the survey, he got to know that the situation was very dire as the poverty-stricken women in the slums were forced to use dirty and unhygienic cloth for menstrual protection.
He then came up with the idea of this bank. Initially, the women were not ready to discuss this with him, but finally, with the help of his female volunteers, he managed to convince them to open accounts in the sanitary pad bank.
Sharing their experiences with News18, the girls said that the initiative has made them more aware of menstrual health issues and now they can talk and discuss them freely.
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