By Suzanne Khan
Extract from Youth for Sustainability Dialogue session held on March 12, 2021.
Through our global showcase and learning platform, Youth for Sustainability Dialogues #Y4SD, the youth is put in the driver’s seat. Initiated in October 2020 by Connecting Dreams Foundation in collaboration with MasterPeace Global, Global Network for Sustainable Development, and Helping Hand International, organized its tenth session on 12th March 2021.
The focus of the session was SDG 5 (Gender Equality): Ushering the next phase of Women’s Rights. The panellists for the sessions were Mkyeku Kisanga, President of Sakonsa, Tanzania, Athrukshna Balakrishnan, Secretary of Girl Up Fembots, Sahiti Ramesh, President of Girl Up Fembots, Coimbatore and Bhavyaa Sehgal, Content Head at Girl Up Inaara. The session was facilitated by Mark Fonseca Rendeiro, Global Core Team of MasterPeace Global.
The expert for the session was Mr Namita Krul Taneja, Founder of Meri Body.
Ms. Namita Krul Tanjea
Ms Namita Krul Taneja, Founder at Meri Body and an expert at the session, addressed the concerns related to menstrual health among women in India. She pointed out that more than forty percent of schools in India do not have separate female toilets. This is also the reason behind high drop out rates among female students, along with stigma related to periods and period shaming, that further leads to gender inequality in economic opportunities. Ms Namita shared that an astonishingly high number of females in India use handmade alternatives to menstrual products.
Meri Body
Meri Body aims to bust myths and eradicate misconceptions related to menstruation and promote body literacy among females in India. Meri Body app uses simple animation videos and multilingual content to spread awareness among girls on sensitive
subjects like fertility, periods, pregnancy, etc. Through Meri Body, Ms. Namita wishes to promote the best practices regarding menstrual hygiene as well as empower and educate women to take control of their bodies. The main goal is to empower uneducated women to make informed decisions and choices concerning their body.
To know more about Meri Body, visit meribody.com
Panelists for the session
Sakonsa, Tanzania
Sakonsa is a non-profit organization that presently has its branches in India, Nigeria, Australia, and Tanzania. The solemn mission of the organization is to ensure that Sustainable Development Goals laid by the United Nation are fulfilled and matched by 2030.The mission and vision of the organization are to provide a well-being economy to the youth in Tanzania. The organization is working with youth who are skilled as well as unskilled but with the drive of making a change in society. They allow the inclusion of youth from various backgrounds regardless of their ethnicity, class, tribal or sexual orientation. As of now, the organization has a small team of committed and devoted youth from Tanzania. Some of them are based within the country while others are volunteering remotely.
On International Womens’ Day, the organisation encouraged their team members to come up with ideas on what the day means to them, their role models and what they would and envision for women. The team was delighted to know that their organization as well as other entities were being welcoming to women on this day and throughout.
The team also collaborated with other NGOs and conducted webinars having a panelist of spectacular women speaking on what this day is to women and various countries of the world. In the long run, the team looks into shifting the trajectory by changing the biased systems which have been running for centuries.
To find out more about their work, you can reach out to them:
Instagram: @sakonsa_tanzania
Facebook: @Sakonsa Tanzania
Website: www.sakonsa.org
Girl Up Inaara, Delhi NCR
Inaara, in its true sense, means a bright light and to the team, it is a ray of hope to empower women around them. Girl Up Inaara is a student-led club walking alongside the Girl Up Campaign, with special emphasis on gender equality, menstrual hygiene, and mental health awareness. The main focus of the organization is to bring awareness about menstrual hygiene, striking thought-provoking conversations among young individuals about mental health and gender equality.
Girl Up Inaara with one of its aims to strike a conversation and spread awareness about menstrual health and hygiene conducted a series of events. The first event was Code Red. The drive was very successful and it included the distribution of around 2500+ sanitary napkins to 40 women from a small village. The drive was done to mark the International Day of Rural Women.
The club also collaborated with a brand called Rahu Says which provided each woman with 64 sanitary napkins and two masks. Another event conducted in line with the series of events was Pride Unprejudiced which was a very unconventional event. The event was an online parade that was organized to address and deal with the issues and stigmas attached to the LGBTQIA community.
On World Mental Health Day, the club organized an Instagram live event on premenstrual dysphoric disorder with Dr Ankesh Sahetya, a gynaecologist, obstetrician and sexologist. By the means of this event, the club created a space for the audience to better understand the disorder, its complications and its differences from other similar disorders. The team also organized another event which was a self-defence workshop. Not only this, but the team also undertook various social media campaigns such as TruthBomb Tuesdays, Review Ravivaar, Myths and Facts about Menstruation and many more.
Girl Up Fembots, Coimbatore
Girl Up Fembots is a small club located in the city of Coimbatore in Tamilnadu. The team stands true to their words and therefore their mission is to stand up for those women who don’t have the same privileges. It is a dream for the team to make sure that every woman earns her right to speak, her right to be brave, rights to be explicit and her right to be free. The activities conducted by the club include fundraising events, awareness campaigns, advocacy and support forum, meet and greets, storytelling, webinars, bonding hours and events which focus on women empowerment. The club was started in August 2020 and has a total of 200 members wherein the active members are 70+.
The first campaign done by the club was a breast cancer awareness campaign which was done in the month of October during the breast cancer awareness month.
This event was done for visually impaired and physically challenged women of the YUVA Foundation. A total of 100 women attended the event with 8 volunteers. The event made women aware of the symptoms of breast cancer and everything about it. In the near future, the club also plans to have a breast cancer camp for the treatment of these women at the same time.
The next campaign that the club organized as a fundraising campaign helped in raising a total of $400 and this was done through selling 200 hampers. Another fundraiser included selling sustainable pads which were made by visually impaired and physically challenged women. It was attended by a total of hundred people. The third fundraiser was a blossom flea that happened in the city of Karnataka.
The club did a bake sale and a sale of organic cosmetic products. The team managed to raise $700 in 2 days and had 30 + volunteers working on this project.
Not only this, the club also organized a panel discussion on mensuration on period poverty wherein they had a total of 70 attendees. Another event was an interactive webinar by women in India which was done in collaboration with Girl Up CIRS and Girl Up CBE.
To know more about the organization, you can visit: www.girlupfembots.com
Overall, the event concluded with a keynote address by Ms. Namita who threw light on the speeches by the different panelists and also talked about the importance of equality amongst different genders. The core team also thanked the participants for joining in and the event was concluded with a vote of thanks.
