The Red Rewind: 7 Years of Change towards Menstrual Equity

7 years of change towards Menstrual Equity

“I was in class 7 when it happened for the first time. I remember I was wearing my school uniform — a faded blue kurta — and I felt something warm and strange. I didn’t know what to do. I ran to the washroom, only to find that the door wouldn’t lock. The floor was dirty, and there was no water. I stood there, frozen. All I could think was: ‘What if someone sees me? What if a boy sees me and laughs?’

When I reached home and told Ma, she scolded me. Not because she was angry, but because she was scared. “You’re not going to school in those days,” she said. “It’s not a good thing.” That was the rule. During ‘those days’, I stayed home. I missed school, missed tests, missed stories my friends told the next day.

We didn’t have pads in our home. “We have old clothes,” Ma would say. “Who will give us so much money for something that is used once and thrown away?” She wasn’t wrong.

Sometimes, even food was a question. Pads were a luxury.

At school, I never heard teachers talk about it. Once, I gathered the courage to ask a ma’am if there was something we could use that didn’t leak. She looked away. I don’t blame her.

Later, I heard her whisper to another teacher, “Even I don’t have answers for these girls.

What should I tell them?”

It’s been almost three years now, and it’s the same every month. The same fear, the same silence. The same dirty toilet. The same itchy-leaky cloth. The same excuses to stay home.”

Tragically, this is the everyday reality of almost every girl in the rural Indian population.

Different faces. Different villages. But the stories? Uncannily similar.

A locked toilet door is a privilege, clean water — a luxury, sanitary pads — “too expensive.” And periods? ‘A matter of shame, not health.’ This isn’t just a lack of access, it is a lack of awareness, a lack of conversation. It is a cycle of silence that has passed from mothers to daughters, teachers to students.

Period poverty in India isn’t just real. It is pretty normal, and that’s what makes it so dangerous.

In 2018, when we first heard stories like these, we couldn’t ignore them. We listened and realized that it’s not just ‘a woman’s issue’, but a ‘human issue’!

This realization of urgency was the beginning of Dyvigya Care Wellness Foundation. We began with questions: Why does this problem persist? Is it a lack of awareness? A lack of money? Or a deeper failure — where the system forgets the very people it was meant to serve? We found out that government interventions do exist. Schemes have been launched. But the real issue lies in the gap — the wide, aching disconnect between delivery and reality. Between policy papers and school bathrooms. Between supply and delivery.

That was the gap we set out to bridge.

We didn’t begin with answers. We began by walking into communities — rural and urban, schools, slums, anganwadis. We listened. We asked. “What does menstruation look like for you? What do you use? Where do you go? Who do you talk to?” and also tried spreading awareness wherever we could!

One of our early Awareness campaigns conducted in schools

So we spent time — months, years — on conversations that should’ve been normal but weren’t. We spoke openly about periods. We trained local women and teachers. We explained reproductive cycles, good hygiene, and health risks. We broke myths — No, it’s not impure. No, you don’t need to sit outside. No, it is not normal to hurt all the time.

But information alone couldn’t solve the problem. We realized that even those who were aware had no access to safe, quality products. What they often used were makeshift pads: gauze, scraps of non-woven plastic stuffed with cotton — things that caused rashes, leakages, infections, and worse.

Donation Drives conducted in collaboration with Inner Wheel Club

So, in 2018, we stepped in with solutions that were thoughtful, accessible, and sustainable. We began distributing high-quality, 100% biodegradable sanitary pads — designed for good absorption, comfort, and dignity. We held donation drives in prisons, offering women behind bars not just hygiene, but humanity. We also adopted many women under our Mission 100 life-altering pads. Through this mission, we ensured 2,500 girls and women had one entire year of safe menstruation. We launched The Red Dot Challenge during COVID-19, ensuring that a lockdown wouldn’t mean a shut-out from basic care and awareness.

Setting up Sanitary Pad Manufacturing unit

In 2019, we had installed sanitary pad vending machines and incinerators in schools and community spaces — quiet but powerful interventions that gave young girls safety and privacy. By 2020, we were able to establish a pad manufacturing unit, creating local employment while ensuring a steady supply of quality menstrual products. In 2021, we took our impact deeper — organizing our first health camps that offered women and girls not only pads, but also access to basic menstrual checkups, often for the first time in their lives.

Installation of Sanitary Pad Vending Machine

And slowly, the numbers began to reflect the stories. We reached over 20,000 adolescent girls and 5,500 women across rural and urban belts. In prisons, 550 inmates — often forgotten in hygiene conversations — were given regular, safe access to menstrual care. Mission 100 Life-Altering Pads supported more than 2,500 girls and women who couldn’t afford consistent menstrual hygiene. Over 250 villages became part of our outreach map, each one a thread in a growing fabric of change.

Mission 100 Life Altering Pads: Adopting girls and women for one year of periods

We donated over 2.5 million pads across India — not as handouts, but as reminders that basic care is a right, not a favor. We conducted more than 5,200 awareness workshops, trained over 2,000 peer educators, and reached over 400 schools. And because talk alone doesn’t change infrastructure, 250 schools received support to improve toilets, install vending machines, and manage waste sustainably.

Seven years in, this work still doesn’t feel finished. Perhaps because it isn’t.

We’ve seen what changes when one girl stays in school all six days a week. When one inmate no longer has to beg for a basic necessity. When one teacher finally includes menstruation in her biology class without shame.

And that’s why Dyvigya Care Wellness Foundation will keep walking into the silences, asking the hard questions, and showing up for menstrual equity.