STOP THE SPOTS – Spreading Smiles
“Stop the Spots” a sanitary napkin campaign is founded by Jaanvi Singh, a 15 years old from Jalandhar, Punjab, student of Welham Girls School – Dehradun, who got inspiration from movie “PADMAN”.

After watching “PADMAN”, Jaanvi Singh shared her idea with her mother “Reeti Singh” of distributing sanitary napkins free of cost to adolescent girls and poor women in slum areas. Later she asked her friend Lavaanya Jain to join her in this campaign. The Aim of this campaign is to teach, make and distribute hygienic sanitary pads free of cost to adolescent girls and underprivileged women in slum and rural areas of India in order to make them self reliant.

There are about 300 million women in India who do not use sanitary napkins during menstruation; owing to the lack of availability, awareness and affordability. In the absence of menstrual hygiene products, women and adolescent girls in this country make use of dirty rags, bark, ash and mud instead. According to gynecologists such practices can cause serious infections and even lead to cervical cancer.

Not only does lack of menstrual hygiene products/practices lead to serious health repercussions but also in a loss of productivity wherein at least 50 working days are lost by women. There is also a concerning increase of 23% in dropout rates amongst school going pubescent girls.

Reeti Singh, Jaanvi’s mother introduced the girls to renowned gynecologist in Jalandhar, Dr. Ritu Nanda. She taught the girls how to make hygienic pads at home. Jaanvi’s brothers, Sumer veer Singh and Ranveer Singh – ‘twins’ of 9 years and Lavaanya’s brother Trinabh Jain of 14years offered to help the girls in their campaign as they needed manpower and pocket money to accomplish their goal of making first batch of 5000 sanitary pads in their summer holidays (initially). The girls collected their pocket money and their brothers too pitched in to buy the material required for making pads.

They made packets of 10 sanitary napkins using newspapers in order to avoid using plastic bags. These were then distributed to the underprivileged girls and women in slums.

The two girls gave talks on the importance of menstrual hygiene raising awareness on the topic. When asked why the girls initiated the campaign they said they were inspired by the movie Padman. They too wanted to do their bit to support the cause spearheaded by the real Padman, Padamshree Arunachalam Muruganantham.

We can all do our bit in some capacity to ameliorate not only the level of hygiene for women and girls but for the overall well being of a society composed of people less privileged than us.