By Lizzy Carr
Adolescent girls, guardians, and community leaders in Bauchi have called for the scaling 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 learned on the project on Thursday in Bauchi.
The Menstrual Hygiene Management Project funded by Kimberly _ Clark Corporation (Kotex) and implemented by Plan International Nigeria seeks to increase efforts at helping women and adolescent girls to exercise their rights to gender-responsive, adolescent-friendly, and inclusive menstrual hygiene management.
Speaking during the program, the Director of 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 the health and education sector as a partner in three local government areas of Bauchi, Katagum, and Ningi.
“This project has impacted 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 miss classes during their monthly period.
“Plan International is happy that the pad banks in schools have helped 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 the empowerment of girls with critical information relevant to menstrual hygiene management.
The Project, he noted adopted adolescent programming, community influence, and Community and Mass Media messaging and was able to reach 33 public schools across the three 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 of Bauchi State Primary Health Care Development Agency Dr Rilwanu Mohammed said the project has recorded tremendous achievements and succeeded in making adolescent girls better knowledgeable about how to manage their health during menstruation.
“It 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.”
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 learned from radio programs on menstrual hygiene, the ministry will work to sustain this project in schools.”
Maimunatu Dahiru, one of the beneficiaries of the project said the project has improved her confidence to discuss menstrual hygiene with her parents.
“Today my father buys me sanitary pads every month 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 formerly missed classes because of their monthly periods.
“We are not afraid of discrimination as a result of menstruation during school hours, schools now have pad banks that any girl who experiences menstruation in school gets sanitary pads to check 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 at a conference in Rwanda where she spoke about menstrual hygiene management.
They promised to sustain awareness among their various communities about Menstrual hygiene management.
