A week ago Magali and I attended the Stayfree Women's Indiblogger Meet at Trident Hotel, BKC.
This was the second meet that we attended.
Stayfree has teamed up with UNICEF to educate 5,00,000 adolescent children from two districts each of Jharkhand and Bihar.
Mr Clement, a french man from UNICEF (working in India for the past few years) spoke very well and made the bloggers understand the need to educate the children as the girl child from these areas are not given a chance to even complete their education in schools let alone going to a college. He also gave statistics that one in every two women were anaemic and that many girl children in villages were married by the time they were 16 years old.
We being born and brought up in a city like Mumbai do not really experience the hardships as these girl children but we can help by making our house help understand about hygiene and also about being clean. We should also make them understand that a woman does not become unclean when she is menstruating and that it is only a normal occurence in a female from the first time until she has her menopause.
I still remember very clearly the first time I menstruated before my fourteenth birthday and was wondering if I was sick because of the blood stain I found on my panties. I did not know exactly what was happening because though we were given a sex education class in the ninth grade by a priest during religion class no mention was made about menstruation. Though an older friend had hinted about menstruation I was completely unaware of this happening in a girl's life. Also my Mother had not explained anything to me so I was very afraid. I then told my mother who replied very casually that it is normal and that it would be happening every month from then until I would have menopause. I was so relieved that I was not sick and that menstruation was a normal occurrence.
I did not make the mistake with Magali. She was a smart and inquisitive child and I remember her asking me as how children come out from their Mothers tummies. I told her that the Doctors make a slit on the stomach and take out the baby but she very smartly replied that she could not have come out from my tummy as I did not have a scar and that her uncle had a scar even though he was operated over 8 years before she was born. I did not tell her right then but when when she was nine I explained to her about menstruation and it was good that I did that because she started menstruating quite early.
When I was young I used Carefree Sanitary napkins that were completely different from today's ones, they were 'belted' & very uncomfortable. But nowadays there are really good Stayfree napkins by Johnson and Johnson which make life more comfortable for those few days in a month in a girls/ladies life. Also they are donating a bit of the proceeds from every pack sold to the UNICEF to help make the rural Indian girl's life a bit better.
I was happy to meet some other great women bloggers too. I really enjoyed the meet. {Here is a picture of Magali & me at the meet, tweeted by the Stayfree team}
Thank You Indiblogger & Stayfree for arranging this meet.
Love to all,
Sheila
