Spearheading Hand Wash & Menstrual Hygiene Practices in India

HEEALS, a non-profit organization has collaborated with various schools to spread awareness about the importance of hand wash and menstrual hygiene among children of variable ages. It’s often seen that a simple practice like washing hands is not given enough importance by children as well as adults. But, it is a medically proven fact that proper hand washing is one of the best ways to  avoid getting sick. Similarly, menstrual hygiene is also an  ignored practice among adolescent girls because of the taboo attached to it.

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HEEALS spearheaded their campaign “Hand Wash and Menstrual Hygiene” using various innovative and interesting activities to explain the importance of hygiene practices. Till now, they have targeted six schools and 1050 students in Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh and Gurgaon, Haryana, India between the age group 10-14 years studying in classes 5^th – 9^th.

For explaining the importance of hand wash and menstrual hygiene, the Heeals has designed four games for the children. These games are called as the “wash games”. They organized workshops in the schools where all the targeted children took part in these games. They also saw cartoon films to understand why they need to keep their hand clean. The multimedia techniques and interactive games were specially designed to help children easily memorise the information.

To break the taboo related to menstrual hygiene, the Heeals members counselled around 210 girl students. They spoke to these girls and resolved their queries and apprehensions related to menstruation making them aware about the importance of menstrual hygiene. HEEALS also distributed sanitary napkins amongst the girl students.

HEEALS Managing Director Gaurav Kashyap Present at the venue emphasised that “Awareness and more awareness is the only Key to make people realize regarding the Menstrual Hygiene . A menstrual taboo is a social taboo by ending this we can make a gender equal society”.