Along with Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28, the Damphu Central School in Tsirang celebrated Sanitary Pad Independence Day. The day reflected on the school’s achievement in sanitary pad revolution.
The education ministry provided sanitary napkin vending machine to the school last year. Since then, female students never faced difficulties in maintaining menstrual hygiene. Apart from distributing sanitary pads to over 500 girl students and female teachers, the school also supplied the stock to other nearby schools.
A group of students (both girls and boys) operates the vending machine. With the help of the machine, the group makes 100 pads in a day. Every room in the girls’ hostel has a pack of sanitary napkins. Likewise, a stock of pads is kept in the school’s health room for use during emergencies.
The In-charge of vending machine, Jambay Dema has been training her juniors to run the machine as she will be graduated from the school next year.
“I supply pads in hostel rooms once a week. The commercial pad packets have eight pieces of napkin inside and cost Nu 35. But, our machine dispenses 15 pieces per packet,” adds Jambay.
The school’s health coordination, Jigme Wangmo said the sanitary vending machine has empowered girls.
“Girls are trained to make pads with the help of the machine. This way, they are becoming more independent and creative.”
By considering the feedback from the users, the school has refined the pad’s quality for better comfort. If everything goes well, the school is planning to produce pads in huge quantities.
“We have informed principals of other schools to take sanitary napkins from here. For sustainable production, we will charge minimal amount for pads. This will help us procure raw materials in the long run,” said Dawa Tshering, Principal of Damphu Central School.
As of now, the pad vending room has raw materials stocked up for another two years. The school is also planning to supply the surplus to the hospital.
Meanwhile, to mark Menstrual Hygiene Day, students were advocated on empowering women through menstrual hygiene.
