Breaking the taboo, Sadaf Naaz talks about Menstruation and doing alot for urban women of Pakistan to live a healthy life.
It’s always hard to talk openly about some issues in Pakistan and menstruation is one of them. Despite being a natural phenomenon, people are reluctant to talk and pay attention to it.
Our team has reached out to a young lady who not only speaks but doing a lot for urban women of Pakistan.
There are many myths and taboos associated with menstruation all over the world, but unfortunately, in Pakistan, 79% of female are managing their menstruation unhygienically. Mostly they are using rag clothes, sand and leaves in their special time of the month. This is due to lack of awareness about health and hygiene and unavailability of sanitary products. Every year 70% of the females are suffering from UTI infections all over the world, in which unhygienically managing the menstruation is the leading cause of the infection. Remaining 21% who do have an access, but they are facing many problems. Because sanitary pads are sold like illegal drugs, first selecting from a store shelf, packed in a khaki envelope and then taken to the counter where male shopkeeper often make the transaction very awkward for the young female buyers. Imagine thousands of women are going through such experience every month.
To solve the menstruation problems in Pakistan, Her Ground has played an important role. Her Ground is the first Pakistan women startup that delivers feminine hygiene products at doorsteps. Her Ground has an online website, from which a woman can easily choose their desired date and time of delivery. Currently, Her Ground is working in Lahore and in Okara.
Her Ground is working on three things. First, it is providing an online subscription service from which urban areas females can easily buy their desired products. Secondly, Her Ground is conducting sessions in schools, colleges, and universities to provide awareness on health, hygiene, and nutrition. Thirdly, every online sale helps the Her Ground to offer the sanitary napkins at an affordable price to girls living in rural areas of Pakistan. Her ground has placed stock in rural schools and girls can easily buy from there and maintain their health effectively.
Now, Her Ground is working on emergency kits to tackle the emergency in working offices and educational institutions.
Her Ground achieved third position globally in GIST (Global Innovative Science and Technology) Tech-I competition held at Istanbul Turkey on April 2018. They also awarded Amazon Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur award. They received 3000$ in cash and 35000$ Amazon Credit as a prize money. They also won scholarship ticket to the 2019 Circular Summit by Hello Alice.
Sadaf Naz is the founder of Her Ground. She belongs to Okara. She is Pharmacist by profession. She along with her team members is providing feminine hygiene products for women at their desired date and time. It is a great initiative taken by this brave girl. No one wants to discuss periods this much openly in public because it is a taboo in our society. She said that you cannot feel others pain until you experience it. She has stronger and sound personality from what I expected. She went through the circumstances when she was unable to have access to sanitary napkins. It is every girl’s need but no one tried to take a step for it. She felt extremely bad when there was no facility for feminine products in her city, hostel, and university during studies. She decided at that time to play a positive role in the society. She took this initiative in the form of Her Ground and proved herself a stronger and fearless woman. But for Her Ground initiative she has been working almost 4 years in a pharmaceutical industry, through this she has saved money and learned some skills, how she can connect the technology with health. A woman who did not stand up for herself but for the others.
Now, Sadaf Naz is conducting awareness programme especially in underprivileged areas like okara, Muzaffargarh, Rahim Yar Khan, and Bahawalpur and make the products accessible in these areas at a cheap price.
She further told us, Her Ground mission is to make every woman of Pakistan to live a healthy, active and confident life. There are plenty of people in society who wants to do something for themselves and even for others too but never come forward because of the fear but there are very few who never let their fear decide their future. Sadaf Naz is one of them who proved this valiantly. She said that every girl to use this service not to just support this platform but to support yourself and womanhood. So, bring the change with your actions as actions speak louder than words.