This week on We Women Want, we talk about menstrual health and awareness with Madan Mohit Bharadwaj, founder of She Wings, an organisation that works to end period poverty by working with rural women, teens, the homeless, and low-income people. We also had She Wings employees Savita and Mamta, as well as Gurvani, Chief Communication Officer, and Shubhendra Rajawat, Chief Planning Officer of She Wings, to tell us stories from the ground.
AWARENESS
A former journalist, Madan founded She Wings once he realised the lack of awareness and also the lack of basics such as sanitary pads amongst low-income women. The foundation is doing a lot of good work in that they not only distribute pads amongst the poor but also educate women on the basics of menstrual hygiene. She Wings volunteers and workers also spend time with the men folk trying to deal with the biases and social taboos against menstruation.
IMPORTANCE
As Madan said, it is a natural cleansing process and not something to be shunned and ostracised. He also recalled how a woman died due to a septic infection from a rusted hook while she was using an old blouse as a sanitary pad. That is when he realised the dire emergency of the situation for something as basic as menstrual hygiene and sanitary pads.
Both the audience in the studio and the entire team at We Women Want were very appreciative of the work that the She Wings team is doing, and indeed, it is efforts such as these that should be applauded and celebrated on the show. The show was moderated by NewsX Senior Executive Editor, Priya Sahgal, and will be on air this weekend on the channel.
Catch fresh episodes of “We Women Want” every Saturday at 7:30 PM on NewsX. The programme will also be streamed live on major OTT platforms-Dailyhunt, Zee5, MX Player, ShemarooMe, Watcho, Mzaalo, Jio TV, Tata Play, and PayTm livestreams.