Unicef scheme vends girls’ education dreams

Transform- ation of A. Asha, a class IX student of a Tamil Nadu school, from a regular absentee to a bright student can provide hope of better academic achievement to girl students in 15 states, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: Sep 22, 2008, 01:17:34 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, Krishnagiri (Tamil Nadu)

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Transformation of A. Asha, a class IX student of a Tamil Nadu school, from a regular absentee to a bright student can provide hope of better academic achievement to girl students in 15 states.

Her academic record has improved over the last eight months after a sanitary napkin vending machine and an incinerator came up at her MC Palli secondary school in Krishnagiri district, 350-km southwest of Chennai.

“She is now one of our brightest students. Her performance has improved a lot,” said M.V. Murali, the principal of the school that installed the machine with assistance from UNICEF.

The class IX student used to miss school at least five days a month. During those days, she stayed in a solitary hut outside her tribal village Eklanatham with an old woman as she was considered unclean.

But since the vending machines have arrived she has not missed any classes. Back home, her newly attained menstrual hygiene knowledge has helped her convince her parents against keeping her at home.

Now, she and 150-odd girls in her school feel the difference. R Subhashami acknowledged she has overcome talking about menstrual hygiene. “Menstruation is not a stigma. It is a natural course and we are not ashamed about it,” she said with a beaming smile.

It is this smile and sense of confidence that made the vending machine worth the money Murali had to spare from the school’s shoestring budget. The machine cost the school Rs 10,000.

An analysis of attendance data in 30 schools by the District Education Office also demonstrated the link between the machines and higher attendance and enrolment rate of girls. “Absenteeism has reduced,” M Bhaskaran, the district’s Education Officer said.

“Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have already initiated the process for installing machines. States like Bihar and Madhya Pradesh are following the suit,” said Devraj, a UNICEF programme officer.

Empowering girl students is not all that the experiment has achieved. It has also provided an alternative source of income to thousands of women in Tamil Nadu enrolled with the Self Help Groups (SHGs) that manufacture the sanitary napkins.

“The schools have provided us an extremely good market to sell our product,” said S Nagalaxmi, who has trained women in SHGs in 18 states to make sanitary napkins at home since 2003.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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