Narrative:
SITUATION BEFORE THE INITIATIVE BEGAN
Menses is one of the most taboo subjects in India, while women use all kinds of rejected cloth as a sanitary napkin in villages & slums, inducing a ‘culture of shame and silence’. In many parts, they don’t even have enough to cover themselves & end up using ash or sand or nothing at all in dire compulsion, leaving them vulnerable to a host of RTI’s .
ESTABLISHMENT OF PRIORITIES
Highlighting basic needs like cloth & looking at reuse & recycling as a solution to address some of these basic needs is at the core of our work. The horror stories Anshu Gupta (founder director, GOONJ) heard from women, while traveling across far flung villages, were the key inputs in drawing our attention to this basic need. Their poverty, combined with lack of awareness about the associated health risk and the overall inadequacy of cloth in the house, all pointed towards addressal at two levels, i.e. the product and the awareness. Given the pathetic conditions of most women and ready availability of cloth plus the simple processes involved, our first priority was developing a product. Goonj’s women workers played an important role in developing the design, self-testing the product & fine tuning the systems.
FORMULATION OF OBJECTIVES AND STRATEGIES
The primary objective of the initiative is to reach a clean piece of cloth to the women in the lowest strata, struggling for everyday survival in the absence of basic amenities. It’s aim is to make them aware about a fundamental issue, highlighting their high-risk behavior that’s putting their health in jeopardy. Exposure and interactions on this taboo issue will play an instrumental role in highlighting the simple possibilities available to them in their daily lives. An important underlined aspect is that we are addressing the basic need of clothing holistically, which in turn helps free up their already meager resources for other more pressing needs like food. That outcome achieved through a piece of cloth will reinforce GOONJ’s mission.
MOBILISATION OF RESOURCES
Like all GOONJ programmes the focus of material, financial and technical resource mobilization have been the masses in the cities.
Financial; We have based all our programmes around the masses. Thus the people who give us material are the one’s we go to for financial support as well as they understand our work well. For this programme we especially target urban women due to their instinctive empathy on the subject.
Technical; since the product and the process is quite simple, it doesn’t involve very evolved technical resources. The second hand washing machines used for washing the cloth have been given by people while the design and usage inputs come either from the beneficiaries or our women workers. For awareness related inputs we take from our experience, consult health experts who are volunteers, interact with other groups working on the same issues.
Human resources: The simplicity of the concept lends it easily for replication by even the most illiterate person. The awareness spreading among village women is being done by our grassroots partner group personnel, who are well versed with their communities and know the cultural and social sensitivities in implementing the work.
PROCESS
Implementation problems; Working on any taboo subject presents major communication challenges first of all. The first was from our rural partner groups who initially expressed hesitation in bringing up this issue in their communities. The ones, especially Ashoka fellows, who understood the holistic aspect of cloth and saw the connect with the health aspect, were quicker to participate while with others, once they saw women talk animatedly about the related problems and issues at community women meetings, understood the relevance. The rural women also show initial hesitation in talking openly about the issue but at community meetings, with lots of women around them and given our strategy of sensitively approaching the subject, once they are comfortable and since they really haven’t had any outlet for this issue, they are keen to talk at length about the problems and issues. Therefore building an understanding about the relevance among partner groups and the beneficiaries is a long drawn process where results become gradually visible. The related issue is getting the partner group to invest even the most minimal resources for the awareness building aspect among the women. Here we are supporting them with a lot of material like posters, leaflets etc as well as training their personnel on communication related issues.
Community participation in decision making: In the villages, the partner groups decide how the napkins will be distributed i.e. where, frequency of distribution, identifying the beneficiary women. The beneficiary women also give detailed feedback about design, quality of product etc. In the cities, volunteers organize collection camps, identify opportunities for talking to women as well as mobilize funds to support this programme while our women workers, using the product, also feedback about design and quality.
Summary of tools, methods and/or benchmarks used for assessing performance; We are already pursuing a detailed and rigorous feedback system ensuring complete transparency. The feedback reports include list of beneficiaries, distribution photographs, media reports, comments by local opinion leaders/government or panchayat officials complemented by random personal visits by GOONJ representatives or through third party evaluation. For this programme we also collate data on key qualitative and quantitative indicators like usage patterns, design feedback as well as health seeking behavior as well as efforts by partner groups in replicating the model and by the beneficiaries in developing their own product, instead of relying solely on Goonj product.
RESULTS ACHIEVED
Partner Groups: Out of the 100 grassroots groups we work throughout the country, initially very few showed interest in working on this project but now after some years of test piloting and interacting with them on the issue, many of them are at various stages of implementing the programme. Not only has their outlook on the subject changed, some are already trying to replicate the model at their own level. Others, already working on health related projects, are making this an integral part of their health programmes.
Beneficiaries; Wherever this programme has been implemented the feedback has been quite articulate and animated. That in turn has helped us fine-tune the process and the design to its present form. There have been some places, where instead of giving it out free some partner groups tried to put a nominal price of Rs 3 for a pack of 5 napkins, to cover their logistical costs. The fact that women still wanted to use the product, says something about its effectiveness. On the other hand, awareness about the health aspect has made many women deal with their napkins more hygienically.
City women: The programme has made new inroads in the cities, where it has not only opened up discussion about a subject where even most highly educated men and women are reluctant to talk. It has made urban women more aware about the pathetic conditions and the general life of their counterparts in villages and the active role they can play in changing the conditions.
SUSTAINABILITY
Financial: cloth used in this project is literally the last shred of un-wearable cloth left after all else has been used. It is therefore making use of the last waste. Thus sustaining material supply is not an issue, on the other hand, given the simple processes, cost cutting and cost sharing, logistical costs are also minimal.
Social and economic: getting urban women involved in the process, initiating debate and discussion in cities and villages, takes away the taboo element, making it more acceptable. As a vast majority face great hardships & indignity, besides health risks due to this problem, having an easy access to a familiar product with the awareness deals with these aspects as well.
Environmental; The reuse and recycling of the last shred of cloth from urban India, termed as wastage otherwise, for a critical need of a village woman, speaks for itself in environmental terms. Given that cloth napkins can be re-used after proper washing and drying, reduces the disposal issues and given that we use only cotton cloth, which is easily bio degradable, also works well for the environment. In the process, a lot of women, who would otherwise be forced to buy normal sanitary napkins, which don’t have reuse options & have a host of disposal issues, would have a safe, clean and environment friendly option available at no financial costs.
Institutional: As this programme gradually spreads;
In the villages- The demand and supply aspect of the product is very much in place; as more discussion and debate happens at the grassroots level, as more women start using the product, more partner groups make it a part of their health initiatives and start replicating the model at their own level, the mass level changes will take their own momentum.
In the cities – Here our focus is on advocacy on the subject at different levels; with individuals, with corporates and with the development sector. As the involvement increases; as more women volunteer for giving material and for spreading the word, as more corporates generate awareness among their employees, as more development organisations like the World Bank acknowledge this issue, inevitably the policy level changes will happen.
LESSONS LEARNED
Communicating a new idea: We started GOONJ with the challenge of communicating a simple but new idea, not understood by many. With no financial support or prior experience; developing of systems and spreading the idea was and continues to be a huge learning. In this scenario we decided to take the concept to the masses, making it a nationwide movement, promoting national ownership of strategies through broad-based civil participation. Today our growth is owed to thousands of volunteers and an anonymous mass of people who have passed the word around about the idea & supported us financially. In the metros the word of mouth spread of the concept has helped us grow from 67 clothes to generate 20,000 kgs of material going to 20 states through more than 100 partner groups and our own offices in 4 cities.
Different partner groups have different capacities, motivations and resources to get involved in the programme. Identifying and working with organizations from different states, with different focus, having different mandates, scale and financial status is a challenging activity. It involves introducing enough flexibility in our interactions, to give consideration to each one’s realities but in the bargain we have access to areas and communities where our work can prove most effective. Given our detailed due diligence and monitoring process, even though there is always scope for some slips, introduction and replication of work still happens at a very fast pace. In the long run reliable feedback from rural partners helps us analyze strategic implications, improve processes and results and, ultimately teaches us how to do better in the future.
Opinion leaders reluctance/resistance: In the villages, the grassroots groups who have been very closely working with the communities take a little time in understanding the relevance and value addition our material offers for their work. BUT we don’t consider this a barrier because we understand that if big development agencies took a lot of time in understanding our concept, the hesitation of small grassroots groups is to be expected.
TRANSFERS
The concept lends itself very well to replication across the world, wherever there are cities and villages. As mentioned before many grassroots partner groups have already initiated the process of replicating the concept.
Once the initial basics are in place, it’s easy to replicate as all the processes have been broken down into easy step wise movement right from awareness building, organizing of collection camps, sorting & packing guidelines, distribution procedures and parameters etc.
By giving people the flexibility to adapt their volunteering to their own circumstances and needs, makes it easy for any one living anywhere to become a part of this work.. While some people like to organize collection camps, others volunteer their expertise in fundraising etc.
The universal applicability of the concept to almost every urban household irrespective of education, language, income, culture, attracts people from all parts of communities.
Being largely volunteer driven, the decentralized decision making results in a greater ownership of the work by the people, which again attracts people.
Volunteers feel comfortable in talking to other people about the concept, since we don’t ask for money at any point in the entire process.
Since our operations have been designed to be very low cost, it is easy to replicate it at very low investments.
The following aspects describe what elements helped in the replication and spread of work;
Developing it as a People Movement: Discarding surplus material lying in urban household’s, is a compulsion for the masses in the cities. We have taken this across the board feature of urban life and worked on generating volumes on a nationwide level.
A spark becomes a jungle fire; We chose to use positive word of mouth spread about the concept to effectively manage the logistics and because it’s more credible, stays longer and penetrates deeper. This in turn has given us very good results in term of voluntary involvement and ownership for our programmes.
Changing mindsets of opinion leaders: We focus on the grassroots partners (all opinion leaders in their own communities) to make them understand the value adds aspect of associating with GOONJ. People with entrepreneurial qualities imbibe the idea quickly and take up a lot of initiative in implementing it. This insight led us to positively exploit Ashoka’s network of social entrepreneurs. Thus working with networks of social entrepreneurs helps in implementing the work quicker.
State Approach: We are developing 1-2 metros in each region as a regional base thus each metro will support the beneficiaries in its region. This reduces transportation expenses and help in better matching the needs due to similar cultural and social norms.
We discourage long term dependence. When partner groups see the impact on their communities, by sharing our learning’s with them we empower them to replicate the model on a smaller scale to supplement our material. The 4 phases are a. providing the product. Starting at a high level and phasing out as they start building capabilities. b. Addressing the general clothing need of the family through our other programs. c. Consistent communication about hygiene, education etc. in the community. d. Work on partner group’s training and capacity building. As a result while the beneficiaries have more cloth, partner group start exploring local avenues of material and GOONJ continues to work on filling up the gaps in the demand.
