The hysteria siberiana after a long high-pressured environment leaves you utter empty - no more customers’ escalations, no high-fives, no daily upward trending graphs of profit margins and EBITDA. Started missing those small interactions with your colleagues who impacted in a big way with very small fine-tunings to the software. Yes, life almost started sounding like a software program - buggy (probably due to lack of knowledge of all boundary conditions) yet achieving what it intended to do.
To get over this emptiness I got associated with an NGO, NOBA (Netarhat Old Boys Association) GSR (Global Social Responsibility) - the group where money was seen as just an object to fulfilling any desires, it’s the determination that matters most to serve the society and the money will automatically follow your deeds. Their purity of soul, naivety (if I am honest) and utmost transparency touched me the most.
There were many initiatives - plantations, free seed distributions, free blankets to the poor, organizing medical camps, free education to talented students of poor economic background (basis of our school), adopting birds, swachchhata abhiyan etc. Painstakingly discussing and monitoring each action yielded some great results- one thing was consistent throughout - the WILL to serve the society.
Vividly remember the day when a young girl suddenly started pleading for Sanitary pads for poor women. We started chipping in whatever we had, but it didn’t take long to realize its unsustainable nature.
How big is this problem after all:
- Only ~36% of the 335 million menstruating women in India use sanitary napkins for their personal hygiene needs
- A significant percentage rely on old rags, plastic, sand and ash to address their hygiene requirements
- 70% of Indian families cannot afford the sanitary napkins currently available in the market
- 23% of girls in India drop out of school once they hit puberty between ages of 10-14
- The percentage of women using safe menstrual products is lowest in Bihar
Knew we had to think smart - coming up with an idea to provide access to pads at a minimum price (~Re 1) near their houses - the dispenser was the obvious answer. Considering the safe disposal of used pads, an incinerator was added to the mix.
A beautiful name was given to the initiative - ‘Sangini’.
“Dream BIG dreams’ and so we did, but it did force us to think hard and broad to exploit every possible resource we had - individually and collectively. Few pertinent questions as usual were pulling us back - How many villages can we possibly target? How much would each village cost? Why on earth would anyone donate us their hard-earned money? What is our credibility anyway? Soon our bigness started deflating, so we decided to do a PoC (proof-of-concept) in just 5 villages and capture the learnings before we hit the long open road. Running past this idea within our close family, friends and villagers was the obvious first validation step before formally tabling at NOBA GSR.
Must have spoken with 20 odd vendors, sometimes ridiculed (given how small we were) and the other times encouraged for our honest attempt, one thing was common though - derision at all levels due to the low expected costs on our part. Finally, we agreed with a vendor purely based on the machines, locally configurable features and most importantly their zeal and attitude to serve society.
A proper structure was conceived - the basis of identifying the village (economic condition, literacy rate, acquaintances with NOBA fraternity to make it a success), identifying a suitable location where girls and ladies will not hesitate to go, village lady volunteers who would speak with girls and ladies in their community, the village prabhari, the protector of machines who would replenish the pads, collect the coins and deposit to the bank etc.
Meanwhile, donations started pouring in - executives of our previous organization, NOBA fraternity and the SBI - the generosity that we witnessed is unthinkable. And it gave us the courage to extend our target further - 5 to 50 and the delivery date was kept by the World’s Menstrual Hygiene Day, 28th May.
It was the time to fasten our belts - logistically 5 levels were created - village, NOBA Prabharis who look after 10 villages, local hubs, delivery centres and NOBA GSR itself for the meticulous planning, effective governance, flawless execution and long sustenance. Consumption tracking, keeping sufficient stock of pads and their continuous supply to villages were thought through.
It didn’t take long to go live with 5 villages- information started pouring in terms of ease of installations, enthusiasm witnessed, difficulty in generating awareness, the performance of the machine and many others that acted as the basis for our daring move to extend our goal to further 150 villages by end of this year.
As we speak, 7 villages (9 installations as 2 are in Purnia town girls schools) have gone live, 50 dispensers and 50 incinerators have already reached our delivery centres. Villages started receiving those machines. All 50 villages have already been carefully shortlisted and prepped to go live by 28th May. This will test our ability to scale from sustenance perspectives before we embark on further 150 villages by end of this year.
A number of friends and organizations have been in touch to take it to the other regions. Yes, numbers have become just another number, hopefully, villages after villages across India will start executing this initiative and the day will not be far when girls will never have to drop out of their schools.
Please donate
India:
Name: NOBA GSR
A/c: 2910000100302941
IFSC: PUNB0291000
Punjab National Bank, Patna, Bihar
US:
NOBA GSR Inc.
A/C 8132320758 Routing 031207607
Or Cheque to NOBA GSR Inc.
94 Harding Avenue, Edison, NJ 08820
UK:
NOBA UK
Sort code: 60 00 08
A/c: 48781827
NATWEST Bank
- Om Prakash Chaudhary 1973504
A glimpse of Live villages events:
