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Driving purpose into practice: Fems Aya’s efforts to normalize the discussion around menstrual health and hygiene.

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Sanitary napkins are subjected to higher rates of taxes in Sri Lanka, excluding a rising number of women and girls from accessing good quality sanitary napkins and hygienic resources. Fems Aya intervened to support our staff members in the best way we could.

The discussion on menstrual health and hygiene are often conducted behind closed doors in Sri Lanka. This not only breeds ignorance and misinformation especially among the youth, but also stigmatizes the topic barring space to clarify, discuss and learn more about menstrual health. Adding to this list of complexities, Sanitary napkins are heavily taxed in Sri Lanka forcing our women to either spend a large sum to afford these essential products or to find alternative products that can lead to health and hygiene complications. While there are about 4.2 million women and girls of menstruating age in the country, only 30% have access to tampons or pads.

Addressing a systematic challenge

In March 2021, Hemas’ very own Fems embarked on a new journey with two distinctive objectives; educate women on menstrual health and hygiene practices and introduce an affordable sanitary napkin to the market.

While the brand’s efforts were reaping better than expected results, Hemas decided to live the purpose within the organization by implementing an in-house free distribution campaign to offer Fems Aya sanitary napkins to its entire staff. In this initiative to drive change, Hemas made sure to include the men in their workforce to further push the normalization of the conversation among their personal circles as well as professional settings.

While the product itself played the role of delivering access to affordable and high-quality menstrual hygiene products, the drive encouraged all team members to be involved in the all-important discourse on menstrual health and hygiene. Lack of knowledge on menstrual health and hygiene and the social stigma attached to periods hold back most people from talking about these topics openly.

Fems Aya initiative was joined by several like-minded organizations including the MJF Foundation, the ARKA initiative, Sarvodaya Women’s movement and Sarvodaya Fusion whose unwavering passion to create awareness on menstrual health and hygiene saw this initiative reaching a considerable number of women across the country.

Hemas believes that irrespective of gender, everyone should be able to talk about menstrual health and hygiene openly while menstrual education needs to be a part of society, which in turn will end the stigma surrounding menstrual health.  In this regard, men can play a big role by taking the message across society and normalising this conversation that menstruation is the most natural cycle that every woman experiences, so that the entire society could support this discourse.

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