## Mensuration Education

However, Menstruation is a natural phenomenon; women and girls do not have the basic right to a dignified menstrual cycle in Nepal. This means that they are subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, including abuse and violence. Menstruation is often viewed as a time of ‘impurity’ and results in wide ranging discriminatory beliefs and practices those vary according to intersecting factors such as ethnicity, caste, religious beliefs, geographical locations and levels of education. Women and girls are often treated as being untouchable during the menstruation time. The exclusionary practices, stigma and prohibitions surrounding menstruation, inherent in traditional beliefs and cultural heritage practices, have a negative impact on school attendance and employment, preventing women and girls from fully participating in economic and social life. This has become an emerging problem in Nepal. Due to the lack of informed plans, policies and programs, women and girls are not only deprived of human dignity during menstruation, but also social stigma and taboo on their health and education. We believe education plays a key role in dispelling myths about menstruation and impurity but often people are confined by social- cultural norms that are deeply rooted in society. They are denied their sexual and reproductive rights and such discrimination needs to be challenged.

Our Initatives

## Research project Dignity without Danger

Dignity without Danger (DWD) action Research collaborative project has been carried out by Liverpool John Moore University and SOAS UK in collaboration with Department of Sociology, Tribhuvan University and six NGO partners in Nepal led by Global Action Nepal. The Research was carried out in 13 districts in 7 provinces in Nepal.

The study explores the origin, diversity and impact of social, cultural and religious menstrual practices in Nepal which deny women and girls the right to a healthy and dignified menstruation. It focuses on promoting women's right to sexual and reproductive health. Nepal being one of the underdeveloped countries in Asia, the situation of every girls and women calls for this attention for their own right and dignity. The diverse cultural belief and social barriers of traditional customs on ill-menstrual practices is hard to break in different parts of Nepal. DWD aims to put in collaborative effort to create a platform to support girls and women for their rights and create strategies for their voice to be heard to face and overcome such challenges. A workshop organized in 2019 by DWD concluded that educating children on menstruation process from the early age and community dialogues with parents are the key to end the menstruation issues in the country

the recent revision in school curriculum to include MHM as a topic from grade 4 to 12 demands supplementary resource materials for children and teachers to make students learning on menstruation inside the classroom with ease. In this scenario GIZ, John Moore University and Global Action Nepal came with the idea of collating all materials and finding the materials gap, developing as per the new curriculum and piloting these existing and new products in different geographical region of the country It has been observed that a rich array of education materials prepared by different organizations, Government agencies Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health and Family planning.
Therefore, the need has been identified to compile and make an index of existing teaching and learning materials around the topic of menstruation in order to provide teachers and health educators a comprehensive choice according to different age group.
The education toolkit thus serves as a support for teachers and students to teach and learn about menstruation in and inter disciplinary way. It will include education materials developed by members of MHMPA during the past years.

## Study of The Government curriculum and analyzing gaps

A three day long residential workshop was organized at the Gan Learning and Resource Centre in March 2021 for the assessment of existing available materials and gap identification against the new curriculum from 4-12 grades. A total of 29 participants were present from different organizations including MHMPA members, DWD partners, technical persons working on MHM, government officials. During the workshop, the representatives of the organizations presented their products and get engaged in discussing who it is for and how they will be used in schools or in the community. The discussions were narrowed down to specifying materials for particular level of the new curriculum developed by the CDC. As a result, gaps were identified between existing MHM materials and requirements in the new curriculum

## Workshop on assessment of disable friendly materials

Following the workshop assessment of materials and gap identification, a day long interaction program on MHM disable and third gender friendly materials and n new curriculum was carried out on 25 th May 2021. The interaction program was found to be beneficial however, there were no existing MHM related disable and third gender friendly materials are available in the market . It has identified their issues and came with suggestions as given below :21 participants were presented in the interaction program.
1. Materials should consider gender friendly
2. Materials should focus on counseling and psychological support for people related with disability
3.Need to include that menstruation also happens to transgender male as well
4. The education kit should also consider third gender, transgender, types of disability in the content and examples and if possible with pictures
5.Need to advocate for universal designed toilet for uniformity and easy to use for people with disability.

## Materials Development

As per the outcome of materials gap identification, a 3 days long residential workshop was organized for the development of materials as required by the curriculum on 10-12 April 2021 at Gan Research and Learning Resource Center, Lalitpur. During the workshop participants were divided into 3 groups as group one was assigned for Grade 4,5, and 6, group 2 was assigned for Grade 7,8, and 9 and group 3 was assigned for Grade 10,11 and 12. All the groups rigorously worked on their assigned task and prepared materials for the tool kit . During the workshop, participants also revisited the outcomes of previous workshop and assessment of existing materials.
A total of 23 participants representing members of MHMPA and partners of DWD were present in the workshop. The materials were produced from 3 different groups.

## Menstruation Education Resources

Menstruation is a cross sectorial issue, dominantly linked with education, human rights, reproductive health as well as water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) and gender sectors in Nepal. In the absence of informed planning, policies and programs, women and girls might be deprived of not only human dignity during their menstruation, but also suffering from social stigma and taboos around menstruation on their health and education.
In Nepal, women and girls do not have the basic right to a dignified menstrual cycle. This means that they are subjected to inhumane and degrading treatment, including abuse and violence. The exclusionary practices, stigma and prohibitions surrounding menstruation, inherent in traditional beliefs and cultural heritage practices, have a negative impact on school attendance and employment, preventing women and girls from fully participating in economic and social life. This has become an emerging problem in Nepal. Due to the lack of informed plans, policies and programs, women and girls are not only deprived of human dignity during menstruation, but also social stigma and taboo on their health and education. Majority teachers are skipping reproductive health and Menstruation content so students have rare understanding of physiology human body and its system. Therefore, A Menstruation education toolkits were developed to ease and less challenging for teacher and students while learning sexual reproductive health.

## Resource kits for menstruation Education (R4ME)

The toolkit is a package of supplementary resource materials for teachers and students it includes:
1. Developed Teachers directives and student learning materials as per the school curriculum (class 4-12) from a team of stakeholders/ actors who has been involving in the sector for long time.
2. Translated version of Ruby’s World (Teachers Directives from WASH United Germany), Compilation of Menstruation Education Resource person’s Radio dialogues
3. Reference materials produced by different organizations even if it is not directly linked to the curriculum. (comics, story books, case studies etc )
4. Pre -piloting The above curriculum based reference materials has been pre-piloted in schools in Lalitpur and Kathmandu after 3 days of teacher training using materials with interactive and joyful teaching learning. A reflection workshop was conducted with all teachers and some student’s representatives to collect feedback which is incorporated into the Resource kits.

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