Challenges & Learnings

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BVHA

CHALLENGES

  • Time Constraints: Often the meetings are conducted at a time when the women are free from household chores and would be able to invest some time in attending the meetings. But one drawback here is that women do not want to spend more than an hour in such meetings and hence it becomes very difficult to match schedules of every woman in the village and invite them for a meeting and wrap everything up on time (mostly within 1 hour). This problem increases manifold when there is any festival round the corner.
  • Liaisoning with Government: Since the inception of the program, BVHA has been trying very hard to reach each and every village in these districts and for that they need the help of the government as well. But it often becomes difficult to convince them of an idea that BVHA has and prove what it can do.
  • Engaging men during the discussions: Though men in the villages are acquainted now with BVHA field staffs and greet them happily, when it comes to attending meetings they still shy away and prefer to send their wives instead. There are men who frown upon the thought of attending a discussion on menstrual hygiene and some even get angry and walk away. This has been one of the major challenges for BVHA though it has been doing these kind of activities since a long time.
  • Difficulty engaging with PRI’s: PRI’s are often very busy and hence are not able to allot that much time as is required out of them and hence it becomes very difficult sometimes to get their dates and engage with them. Since PRI’s are an integral part of this programme, it is imperative that they are involved at each stage.

LEARNINGS

  • Continuous efforts bringing change in behavior: Bringing behavioral change is not at all easy and the continuous efforts at increasing the level of awareness regarding menstruation and other hygiene practices have brought about a positive change in the way men and women look at things. For making a person switch to good hygiene practices, adequate information needs to be provided at regular intervals to bring a change in behavior and slowly the barriers are breaking. This effort needs to be continued for a long time by all the partners involved in the project.
  • Health still not a top priority among women: During the meetings and activities that are conducted by BVHA, it was discovered that women often do not place their health at top priority and prefer serving their family and community more. This attitude needs to be changed and more efforts need to be put at emphasizing the importance of changing mindsets.

PRATHAM

CHALLENGES

A major challenge faced by Pratham representatives in intervening is reluctance from the teacher’s side to attend the training program. They realise the importance of training after they attend the two-day training program.

There used to be no support from the school authorities either in training the teachers or conducting extra sessions for school girls to talk on MHM. They started accepting and supporting once their awareness about Pratham increased.

The teachers are initially hesitant to talk about MHM. It takes a while to get them talking and discuss about the issues involved in it.

This is the first time Pratham is doing a project on Hygiene, so it was a challenge for the representatives to start the project. They underwent training programs to understand the issue, its challenges and solutions. The challenges in the project are new to them and finding solutions for each of them requires dedicated thinking.

LEARNINGS

Since this is Pratham’s first project on MHM, there has been a lot of learning from the acratch for the representatives. Different problems were all first of its kind and required innovative approaches to solve them.

Awareness about Pratham and its work, in the community is important to gain acceptance in the community. This helps in convincing people easily. Celebrations like Bihar Diwas, Munger Sthapana Diwas act as a platform for advertising the good work done by the organization.

DHARMA LIFE

CHALLENGES

  • Financial constraint of DLEs to consistently maintain stock of sanitary napkins that adversely impacts sanitary napkin access.
  • Seasonal challenges such as incessant rains, disrupt distribution of sanitary napkins.

LEARNINGS

  • Creation of a unique distribution channel with women entrepreneurs becoming access points for sanitary napkins in villages.
  • Driving income generation for the women DLEs in Munger and Bhagalpur to earn a livelihood by selling sanitary napkins and other social impact products.
  • Improving quality of menstrual health in villages through increase in adoption of sanitary napkins.
  • Collaborating with alliance partners to cover a comprehensive network in Munger and Bhagalpur for product orientation and to drive distribution of sanitary napkins.
  • Creation of the first draft to the MPN Knowledge Centre by collaboration with alliance partners for ideation, content and further development.
  • Creating access to last mile data for improvement of rural demand and supply.
  • System well in place to continue sales of pads after program (and funding) has formally ended.

SEWA BHARAT

CHALLENGES

  • Time Constraints: Often the meetings are conducted at a time when the women are free from household chores and would be able to invest some time in attending the meetings. But one drawback here is that women do not want to spend more than an hour in such meetings and hence it becomes very difficult to match schedules of every woman in the village and invite them for a meeting and wrap everything up on time (mostly within 1 hour). This problem increases manifold when there is any festival round the corner.
  • Engaging men during the discussions: Though men in the villages are acquainted now with BVHA field staffs and greet them happily, when it comes to attending meetings they still shy away and prefer to send their wives instead. There are men who frown upon the thought of attending a discussion on menstrual hygiene and some even get angry and walk away. This has been one of the major challenges for BVHA though it has been doing these kind of activities since a long time.
  • Gap between awareness and product distribution: During this intervention, we observed that there was a gap between awareness generation and product distribution interventions. One usually didn’t follow the other. Because of this, the transition from awareness to adoption was impacted and initially moved at a very slow pace.

LEARNINGS

  • Health now gaining priority among women: Menstrual hygiene is one of the least discussed topics in a household and hence it was very difficult initially to convince women to give up old habits and adopt new and better hygienic practices. Women are now aware regarding the infections or diseases that can occur if good hygiene practices are not adopted.
  • Men willing to participate in discussions: Like women, men also have gained awareness regarding MHM and are open to participating in discussions that could concern their mother, wife or daughter.
  • Converting awareness to habit: Merely giving awareness will not help in bringing about a behavioral change. Proper care needs to be taken to ensure that women switch over to the use of sanitary napkins and keep their surroundings clean during all times.
  • Continual effort on MHM: Increased and continuous efforts need to be put in to ensure that the behavioural change is taking place in each and every village.

RESTLESS DEVELOPMENT

CHALLENGES & LEARNINGS

Arranging meetings, steep monthly targets and finding volunteers are main challenges in the implementation of the program. In arranging meetings, support from the school is of utmost importance. Many a times, the school authorities are not very supportive of the events conducted as it disturbs the regular classes. Another issue in arranging meetings is the number of working days in a month. Vacations and holidays leave very less number of days to cover the monthly target of school coverage in a month.

Support from the health department to conduct awareness programs in the district is another challenge. The permission seeking process could sometimes be cumbersome. In conducting events, people are hesitant to participate. Natural calamities like floods and communal clashes pose unseen challenges.