Students to learn about periods
UNICEF will train school teachers, who will pass on knowledge to their pupils.
Mumbai: For the first time, the staff of schools under the Maharashtra government will be trained on ways to sensitise students about menstrual cycle and related hygiene concerns. The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) will take six sessions for the teachers and the education officers of these schools to train them on how to conduct workshops to sensitise students. Starting December, the project will be implemented in schools across the state.
Menstrual Hygiene and Management (MHM) is an initiative by the state government for the secondary and higher secondary students enrolled at the government and eventually civic schools across the state. From teaching how to use a sanitary napkin to how to properly dispose it, everything will be covered in the training sessions.
The Thane Municipal Corporation last year had conducted this project in 2,000 schools in the Thane district, where one teacher of every school was trained. “Our aim was to being seriousness and sensitivity among the students and teachers in order to make menstruation a normal thing. Many people still feel that it a very impure and dirty process and we are trying to change their thought process,” said an education officer of TMC.
In this project, the teachers are taught facts about the menstrual cycle, which they later pass on to their students.
“We want to remove the taboo associated with menstruation and hygiene. Through these workshops, they will get the basic awareness of the natural process that every girl goes through,” aid Suvarna Kharat, deputy secretary, state’s school education department. Kharat is the in-charge of this project.
Once the teachers are trained, it’s on the teachers on whether to they want to conduct the workshops on only girls or even include the boys. The department has no restrictions on the same.
A taboo subject
A study published by A.C. Nielsen and UNICEF in 2016 said that over 70 per cent of Indian girls are unprepared for their first menstrual experience because of the stigma around it.