Hello Friend!

Welcome to Periodically - in this issue: catching up with partners, exclusive peek at our organic range, Pad for Pad, health tip for reducing cramps, rapping parents and much more!

News...

In June, Angana visited us from Project KHEL in Lucknow - a project that we have been partnering with since 2013 and whose work we find very inspiring. Angana (pictured with the team, bottom row, 2nd from left) is a passionate MHM facilitator and has been interning with us for 1 week helping us in the development of a module for training facilitators in MHM work. We loved having her with us and appreciate the peer learning opportunity this has given us!

Harishini and Meera, Eco Femme’s menstrual health program educators (pictured below on the right), attended the first in a series of training modules to become facilitators to teach curriculum developed by Corstone. Corstone is a ground breaking program for adolescent girls to develop emotional resilience and critical skills to be come agents of change within their communities. We are exploring applications for this work at Eco Femme and are preparing to set up a pilot program in the coming weeks through a local school.

Pad for Pad...

Eco Femme's flagship adolescent girls program - Pad for Pad - completed it's third year of operation in April, you can read last year's report here. We are now four months into year 4 with new targets and goals. Here are the figures for our first Pad for Pad quarter of the year.

	2015/16	2016/17 targets	to date
girls reached	3650	6000	1096
pads given	13676	24000	4084
sessions	111	200	37
donations received INR	13,79255	19,20,000	3,68,363

Spotlight on...

This issue, the spotlight is on Saphara, an organisation committed to social transformation who create “learning journeys with a purpose”. By bringing youth from mixed communities in Northern Ireland to schools in India, they foster cross cultural learning and youth leadership making a life changing impact. We've had the pleasure and good fortune of partnering with Christine and her team at Saphara for a number of years arising out of our shared passion to support adolescent girls in realising thier potential. Saphara invest in our pad for pad program, facilitate partnership development with other NGO’s and sponsored our participation in the Corstone training. We were delighted to have Christine visit us recently, catching up on all the ways both our organisations have been evolving over the last few years.

(left to right: Eco Femmes' Harishini, Jessamijn, & Kathy with Christine of Saphara)

In Brief...

We attended a meeting in Delhi in early July convened by PATH. It was attended by multiple stakeholders, including from WaterAid, UNICEF and WASH United who will be updating their programs and focusing of collaborative strategies through round table discussions. It was a pleasure to attend and offer a viewpoint from grassroots level. Here's a video created for the event.

Eco Femme is participating in L.I.M.E. (Lessons In Marketing Excellence), a marketing challenge that is put across to 12 of the largest Indian Business Schools.

This year's theme is "Brands with a Purpose". Eco Femme is linked to IIMB (Indian School of Management Bangalore).

Students at IIMB are in teams competing with each other to find the best solution for Eco Femme's marketing challenge.

Find out how this challenge went in our next issue!

Here's a super sneaky peek at our fully organic range coming at the end of the year. We love the new design!

Did you know that our current range is now made with organic flannel too? Visit our Shop to buy now.

Amazing Hannah Whelan has for the past 6 weeks been conducting research into the long term use of our pads with rural women in the local area for her thesis (stay tuned for more on this research!)...she also wrote this delightful article for our blog

Monthly tip...

You have period cramps? Taking magnesium can ease menstrual cramps. Magnesium can be found naturally in some foods or can be taken as a supplement. You can read about the benefits of using magnesium for cramps here and about other health benefits here.

Just for laughs...

We loved this 'cool' menstrual rapping video made by the creators of the Lammily doll (the doll with menstrual accessories, modelling realistic and positive body image to girls). Check it out, yo!

To thank you for reading this issue of Periodically and to celebrate Indian Independence Day this Monday, we would like to offer you a discount if you make a purchase on our online shop.

Simply enter the discount code 'independence' at the checkout to receive a cool 15% off!
This code is only valid until midnight IST on the 15th Aug so be quick!