World Population Day 2023
Yas Comez
13 July 2023
Although women make up nearly half of the global population, they continue to face significant inequalities. In spirit of World Population Day (11th July), we wanted to highlight our commitment to this year’s theme of ‘’Unleashing the power of gender equality: Uplifting the voices of women and girls to unlock our world’s infinite possibilities.’’
As you may recall, we funded a brilliant project with our charity partner – Sanitation First India/ The Cycle which directly addressed health needs of the women in numerous ways.
Firstly, part of the project is called ‘Happy Periods’, where Sanitation First supply period packs for the young girls at a local school in small town in the Tamil Nadu state. To strengthen menstrual cycle support, they also provide training to both girls and boys to enhance knowledge of menstrual cycles. Within the same school, toilet facilities have been built for the girls and boys to improve sanitation for the young children.
Within the same funding, a new maternity block was built in the primary health centre of Padur, serving 35 remote villages in the Kanchipuram district – providing a facility that enables mothers to safely give birth to their babies.
We mentioned in our blog post back in February that we visited the community of Masimanagar where over 150 families have no access to toilet facilities – highlighting the need for sanitation facilities in this area. We are delighted to share with you that we have now approved funding to support Sanitation First India in this project!
The project sets out to support the community through a series of interventions. These will consist of constructing a women’s sanitary complex that includes a WC for the elderly, pregnant and physically challenged, a manual incinerator to dispose of menstrual waste, adequate bathrooms, dedicated wash areas and handwashing facilities, and an overhead tank & rooftop rainwater harvesting system connected to recharge well. Alongside this, training for men, women, boys, and girls in the Happy Periods Curriculum will be provided – as well as sustainable menstrual kits for the women and girls. Lastly, a committee known as the WASH committee will be formed and trained on how to take care of the operation and maintenance of the sanitary complex.
This will support the community of Masimanagar by significantly improving access to safe sanitation facilities for the vulnerable tribal community and capacitate them to use it with safety and dignity, ensure zero waste discharge on the environment, ensure sustainable use of assets created through the trained WASH committee, enable training for men, women, boys and girls on adolescent health and wellbeing – demonstrating mutual respect for one another, and create a reduction in substance abuse through peer leadership and motivation.
This project will promote greater support for many in the community, especially the women and girls. Through partnerships with organisations like Sanitation First / The Cycle, we strive to ensure that women’s voices and needs are placed at the centre of community debate and development. We look forward to sharing updates with you as the project develops!
