……..as Plan International exit intervention
By Lizzy Carr
Adolescent girls, guardians and community leaders in Bauchi have called for the scale up of the Menstrual hygiene management project from the three benefitting local governments area to cover the entire state.
They spoke at a one day project close-out workshop to provide updates on achievements and lessons learner on the project recently in Bauchi.
The two Menstrual Hygiene Management project funded by Kimberly _ Clark Corporation (Kotex) implemented by Plan International Nigeria has over all objective to increase the individual and collective agency of women and adolescent girls to exercise their rights to gender_ responsive adolescent friendly and inclusive menstrual hygiene management.
Maimunatu Dahiru said the project has improved her confidence to discuss menstrual hygiene with her parents.
“Today my father buys me sanitary pad on a monthly basis thanks to the knowledge he got from the project which is inclusive and carries everyone along in our communities”.
She noted that girls like her no longer missed class because of their monthly period.
” We are not afraid of discrimination as a result of menstruation during school hours, schools now have pad banks that any girl who experience menstruation in school get sanitary pad to access and come back to class immediately,
Today our teachers, parents and community leaders talk freely about menstrual hygiene management, thank you Plan International Nigeria for this project “.
Like her, Jessica had the opportunity to represent the state in a conference in Rwanda where she spoke about menstrual hygiene management.
They promised to sustain awareness among their various communities about Menstrual hygiene management.
Director Programme Quality and Innovation Plan Internationational Nigeria Helen Idiong said that the KCC menstrual hygiene management project was implemented in collaboration with Community Initiative for the promotion of health and education sector as a partner in three local government area of Bauchi, Katagum and Ningi.
“This project has impacted on the lives of in school and out of school adolescent girls from the things we have heard, the joy we have heard from school girls has given us a lot of excitement”.
Idiong stated that adolescent girls and women lack adequate privacy to menstrual hygiene management facilities and sanitary pads a situation that has made many to miss classes during their monthly period.
“Plan International is happy that the pad banks in schools has help keep girls in schools and today the boys are very supportive of their classmates and sisters during menstruation”.
She is optimistic that the State and other stakeholders will sustain the project
Senior Programme Manager Plan International Bauchi Nasiru Muhammad said in two years of the project different approaches were used to provide immediate response and built resilience through empowerment of girls with critical information relevant to menstrual hygiene management.
The Project he noted adopted Adolescent programing, community influencing and Community and Mass Media messaging and was able to
reached 33 public schools across the 3 Local government areas of Bauchi, Katagum and Ningi for awareness creation on menstruation.
” Initially the project targeted 200,000 in the 3 local government areas, we were able to reach a total of 14,616 m directly excluding those reached via social media messaging and a total of 589,725 were reached in all”
Muhammad added that the project was keen on social inclusion which is why it reached out to persons with disabilities .
“Today religious leaders talk about Menstrual hygiene management in their sermons and that is very encouraging”.
Executive chairman Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency Dr Rilwanu Mohammed said the project has recorded tremendous achievements and succeeded in making adolescent girls have better knowledge of how to manage their health during menstruation.
Director women Bauchi State ministry of women affairs and child development Hajiya Fatima Abdullahi said the project has inculcated the knowledge and best practice of proper menstrual hygiene management in our women of reproductive age in-school as well as out of school adolescent girls in the state.
“It is also worthy to note that this intervention has increased male involvement as also encouraged them to hold on to their responsibilities by providing monthly sanitary pads to their children and women”.
Deputy Director Ministry of Education Bauchi, Bilkisu Inuwa said the awareness created on menstrual hygiene management has transient the three local government areas.
” We do receive calls for scale up to other areas following lessons learnt from radio programs on menstrual hygiene, the ministry will work to sustain this project in schools”.