While Akshay Kumar’s film ‘Pad Man’ has started creating a buzz in theatres, tribal women of our country are now going to witness a hygiene revolution as Maya Vishwakarma the ‘Pad Women’ of India is all set to start a movement by distributing free sanitary pads to tribal women in the country. Realising that the taboo of menstruation was depriving them of a very basic necessity, ‘Sukarma Foundation’ a non-profit organisation runs by Maya has started a movement to distribute free affordable semi-biodegradable sanitary pads to tribal women’s in India, starting with the tribal area of Narsinghpur, Madhya Pradesh in association with a global crowdfunding and fundraising platform for nonprofits and social innovators, ‘Crowdera’, which does not charge any commissions on donation processing and provides features rich fundraising toolkit for global charities and NGOs.
Commenting on this social movement, Sukarma Foundation’s founder Maya Vishwakarma said, ‘Being women I know firsthand the problems and social stigma that a young girl goes through in this country. This also gives me the courage to stand up and do something about it so that future generations in small villages don’t face such similar challenges.’ According to study there are 134, 00000 girls are diagnosed with Cervical Cancer and 72,000 females are killed every year due to cervical cancer. This is horrendous especially in the rural tribal area where the women use rags, dried leaves, old clothes in a very unsanitary manner. 80% of India’s population does not use sanitary pads because they are unaffordable, added Maya.
To fulfill her dream the foundation has already set up a manufacturing facility of producing sanitary napkins with the brand name “No TENSION” in Narsinghpur. The mini sanitary napkin-making machine, costing approximately of Rs 4 lakh is installed which is not only very affordable and consumes low power but also manufactures an eco-friendly product compared to products from large manufacturers, said Maya.
While to support its cause global crowdfunding company ‘Crowdera’ provided its free fund-raising platform to launch a campaign to raise funds for this movement. Commenting on this campaign Chet Jain, Founder, Crowdera said, “I have known Maya for a couple years now and every interaction we have had was always about how she can make a difference in lives of the tribal women in India. All we at Crowdera want to do is help her take this movement not just nationwide, but make it a global movement. I appeal to the millennial and generation-z crowd to join this pad-woman, and give the gift of hygiene to every underprivileged girl child and women in the world, "gifting one cloth free period at a time".
While, Maya mentions that "I have been associated with Crowdera since the inception of Sukarma Foundation. Our mission just effortlessly aligns with Crowdera’s philanthropic approach of not charging commissions and helping us fundraise from donors around the world. I really wish more volunteers join our fundraising team on Crowdera, so we take our movement nationwide"
As per its plan the Sukarma Foundation will provide free sanitary napkins to 6th grade to 12th-grade school and college girls of tribal residential schools. It aims to reach out 15 to 20 schools of 4 to 5 villages are targeted in one district to maximise its reach.
