Rutuchakra workshop was held on the 5th of January, 2019 at Mantri Espana apartment with the objective to spread awareness about menstruation for the support staff and house helpers.
Rutuchakra team and the volunteers were warmly greeted by a group of 20-25 women. This workshop was conducted in association with Tejomay Charitable Trust - Mantri Espana and sponsored by Adarsh Charitable Trust.
The workshop began with Sanjana Dixit, the founder, introducing herself and briefing the audience about the objectives of workshop. This was followed by a presentation by Diya and Soumya of the Rutuchakra team. They gave the presentation in both Kannada and Hindi to ensure better clarity. They started with a talk about the importance of personal hygiene ad how to take care of one's body. Following this, we had two of our volunteers - Anishka Agarwal and Shaina Dulles - who shared their experiences with menstruation and menstrual hygiene to open up the conversation on this topic.
The mantle was then once again passed on to Diya and Soumya. They continued, giving a simple explanation of what menstruation is and why it happens, and how it is something they should be proud of, not ashamed. The discussion then proceeded to cover more about the usage of sanitary napkins and their disposal.
At our previous workshops, many women/girls opened up about the various myths and taboos that they and their families practised. Diya and Soumya spoke about why these myths were impractical and illogical, and how they affected the girl/woman adversely.
To conclude the workshop, we conducted a fun, interactive activity. The women were divided into two groups and each group was assisted by 3 volunteers. Each group was given a topic that was discussed about in the workshop and was asked to list all the things that they remember about the same. The volunteers then listed down all the things that were brought up by both the groups and then read it out. The response was surprising as both the groups managed to bring out all the points that were discussed by Diya and Soumya.
One special example that we want to highlight is that of a woman from the audience. Initially, she was completely against, rather appalled at the idea of opening the conversation on menstruation with someone from the opposite gender. However, at the end of the RutuChakra workshop, she came up to us and told us that she proud of herself and not ashamed by her menstrual cycle anymore. In fact, the first thing she was going to do after going back home was to tell her husband about the workshop.
This left us with sense of satisfaction and achievement. This is what RutuChakra strives for, - to make a difference in the lives of others and we are getting there slowly, one girl at a time :)
Thank you Tejomay Charitable Trust(TCT) - Mantri Espana and Adarsh Charitable Trust(ACT) for giving us this wonderful opportunity to interact with and spread awareness amongst these women.
We would also like to thank our volunteers - Aditi Attada, Animisha Saxena, Anishka Agarwal, Manognya Reddy and Shaina Dulles - for helping us all throughout to ensure that this workshop was a success :)