This project exists to deliver stigma-breaking menstrual hygiene education and sustainable sanitary products to 300 school-age girls in Bangladesh.
Talking about periods is a social taboo in most parts of Bangladesh. As a result, many girls don’t understand what’s happening to their bodies when they get their first period, let alone how to manage it safely. Using unhygienic materials like rags and old bedsheets, instead of proper sanitary products, leads to frequent illness, embarrassment and skipping school.
This project will enable a team of health professionals to go into under-resourced areas of Bangladesh and educate girls about periods in a way that reduces the stigma and shame they currently face. Teenagers will learn to respect and be proud of their changing bodies. Girls will learn how to confidently manage their periods in a hygienic way, and each girl will receive a pack of reusable, washable sanitary pads. From now on, every girl that attends a workshop will no longer have to fear her period, but will be equipped to stay clean, healthy and attend school every day of the month.
The expected project outcomes are as follows:
Our project leader Sharmin is on the ground in Bangladesh coordinating these workshops, educating people in her community and distributing sanitary products. We have worked with Sharmin for over 4 years, funding several of her period-poverty reduction programmes and have full trust in her organisation's capacity to undertake this project. Sharmin will provide photo, video and anecdotal evidence of project activities and implementation, as well as receipts and budget breakdown on expenditure. When Just Peoples is able to visit Bangladesh again after Covid restrictions ease, we'll be able to visit some of the girls and women who have received the education, and be part of workshops. We'll provide regular updates to donors on the impact they have made, as part of our commitment to all Just Peoples supporters.
We believe in a world without poverty. Where people have the power to solve their own problems, their own way.We don’t believe that foreign intervention is the key to solving poverty. We believe that real, sustainable change comes about when people are given the resources to lift their own communities out of poverty. We tackle global poverty by supporting grassroots leaders to design and deliver locally appropriate solutions to the challenges their communities face. Just Peoples currently has 16 Project Leaders from across Africa, Asia and Mexico who are bringing to life a wide-range of projects based on delivering health, education, technological, gender-based and economic outcomes for people living in poverty. Our Project Leaders are effective because they have a deep understanding of the local context of poverty in peoples’ lives, and have established respected relationships in their communities. Their insight and expertise make them the best people to understand problems, and implement lasting changes that work. So far we have delivered 100 grassroots projects globally, impacting the lives of over 85,000 people living in 13 countries around the world.
Thank you for encouraging us to sharpen our foundation’s focus on gender outcomes. We naturally gravitate to philanthropy for women and children’s programs but the gender focus wasn’t as sharp as it could be.
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