My Digital Action Campaign ' Urban Partnerships for Rural Impact: Dignity for Periods'

'Breaking the Silence' is a global campaign to end myths, taboos and stigma around menstruation in India and globally, so that adolescent girls and women do not live in ignorance, attain menstrual hygiene and good health, secure a supportive environment at school, work and community and periods do not interrupt their education, work and life aspirations.

'Breaking the Silence' is a village focused initiative to improve the quality of life for girls and women through education on menstrual hygiene management, the need to talk about the subject openly among peers and lend support to each other. It does all this by utilizing urban resources for rural impact.

The campaign implements its on-ground, outreach program and village level activities of training,community night classes, house-to-house visits for message dissemination, community mobilization, women empowerment sessions and advocacy with the local government and other stakeholders but it channelizes urban resources-sanitary pads from donations from the urban population in India, solutions and recommendations sourced from global and national level intellectual discourse and research, media coverage based out of cities, both newspapers, radio and TV and small funding support for implementation from city dwellers/individual donors.

My Digital Action Campaign

My Digital Action Campaign will project all the activities of Breaking the Silence Global campaign,relevant events and milestones both local and global and key resources on different media platforms including World Pulse, Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, Instagram, Blogger, newspapers, community radio and TV for a duration of six months between July-December 2016.

The goal of my Digital Action Campaign is to bridge the wide gap that exists in India between the urban and rural in the context of attaining menstrual hygiene, resources like sanitary materials, soap, toilets, water supply and disposal avenues, whereby the resource and solution generated by urban people participating in my online campaign will impact the quality of life in rural(and also urban) India by way of changed policies and resources mobilized for their use.

I wish to achieve all these through my Digital Action Campaign-

• Create awareness on'Breaking the Silence'Campaign and its activities.


• Raise fundsfor specific projects under 'Breaking the Silence'.


• Capture attention of multinational and other companies that manufacture sanitary and hygiene related products and secure either funding or material support for my core activity of training girls and women and providing free sanitary pads.


• Change people's perspectives and bring them toreject the myths, taboos and stigmaaround menstruation that exist; replace the assigning of untouchability to menstruating girls and women withdignityand recognize periods as a life-giving phenomenon and not something 'dirty.'


• Createawareness on menstrual hygieneand good health practices andempowergirls and women with accurate information.


• Link womenwho are passionate about menstrual hygiene, women's health, education and empowerment and forge global and localpartnerships.


• Createvillage phone support groupsamong girls and women to develop a network which will disseminate information and extend help when required on menstrual hygiene and reproductive health; use the digital action campaign to share this best practice worldwide and aim for itsreplication.


• Involve boys and menin the journey of women's empowerment and attainment of menstrual hygiene.


• Encourage community action by incentivizing leadership and action and providing visibility on the campaign.


• Serve as a platform wherepeople will sharereports on cultural practices/problems in the context of different regions and communities.


• Inviterecommendations/solutionsand collate people's solutions.


• Lead apetition campaignbased on the consolidation of people's recommendations and take these recommendations to positions of authority and influence the government forpolicy change.


• Sensitize mediaon the issue and encourage more stories, articles and reports on menstruation and community.

A woman bleeds for 40 years in her lifetime and about 3000 days in total. Girls and women are treated as untouchables and impure during periods in India. Are we willing to remain untouchables for 40 long years and shunned from family and community life because we bleed every month? Girls and women in India will rise and we will use our voice to reject practices that demean us and deny us our right to dignity.

Menstrual blood is not impure. Menstruation is a life-giving phenomenon.