A School with 70% Girls

By Sriya Chadalavada

The village Vedhiyahi was more or less a back-up plan that Ashwin had put together. We had to drive over 200km to reach Vedhiyahi and it took 8 hours. Ashwin had been to this village previously, and with students from Chitwan Medical College, taught them how to make an earlier version of his pad that involved less sewing and costs. Shriee Secondary School is a government school in Phulkha. The school had made over 200 of them and stored them for the students and staff to use. Previously, they used to use disposable pads, but many had switched following Ashwin’s initial presentation. Apparently it had become somewhat of a trend in the 9th and 10th grade.

The government school serviced 870 students, of which approximately 600 were girls. This disproportionate number of girls is the result of more boys being sent to boarding or private schools. While a few daughters of richer families study here, no sons of wealthy families study here.

The principal of the school, Shailendra Kumar Thakur, along with the staff that we have met, are highly invested in their students, particularly their female students. The school provides both cloth and sanitary pads for free—even to teachers. The students have free schooling, free books, and even free uniforms. Over this past month, the principal had two of the ground floor rooms carpeted with his own money, one being his office, and the other a multi-purpose room. When we asked what his next goals for the school were, he said he wanted to continue carpeting the 10 rooms that remained and then eventually build a library for the students.

We’ve decided to help invest in the library in addition to renovating the school room allocated to our collective.

Following Ashwin’s usual talks with the school children and women over the next two days, LJ and I spent some time interacting with one classroom in particular. There were about 40 girls from grades 9-10. Although there were language barriers, we managed with the help of Darshan occasionally translating. We had each of them write down “I menstruate,” and then anything else they wanted could follow. Most wrote approximately one page over the next 15 minutes. Afterwards, we collected the papers and asked their permission for their words to be read annomously. When all the girls said they were okay with this, we passed the papers back randomly and each girl read the words of another.

After this, the girls still had some time before their lunch break so they began singing one by one in the front of the classroom. At one point they collectively sang the Nepali national anthem and LJ responded with the US national anthem.

With the school girls at lunch, we went to check on Ashwin and Prashant who were working to set up the collective and teach the women to make the pads. There were 10 women present, 6 to cut while 4 would sew. They would be given enough material for 1000 pads, 500 of which would be given away for free to their local community.

We paid each of the women in this collective approximately $10 a month, a wage they consider fair. We initially wanted to pay the women higher wages than they wanted, but Ashwin said we should only pay them this amount, one that would very likely increase once the pads began selling. Additionally he said if we gave the women higher wages at the beginning, some may drop our or lose interest in the collective if the wages lowered. If the women make $1 of profit on each pad they sell, they would make $1000 for selling 1000 pads. To put these amounts in context, the average family in this community makes $300.