As a teenager living in the world’s most populous country, I was appalled when I learnt about the state of reproductive health in India. According to a UNFPA report, of the 121 million unintended pregnancies from across the world, one in seven cases are reported from India. The problem proved more complex and multidimensional when I read about the state of teenage pregnancies in the country.
The beginning
Though my friends and I had discussed the issue, we couldn’t begin to imagine how drastically the lives of these teenage mothers must have changed. So, we took up the issue of unintended pregnancies for our IGCSE Global Perspectives team assignment.
Project Hifazat has grown from being a school project to protecting the lives of teenagers and improving the state of reproductive health in the country. We work with a multitude of demographics, addressing various aspects of reproductive health, including period poverty, unintended pregnancies, cervical cancer screening, and the stigma attached to reproductive health.
We have worked extensively on both preventive and curative measures for improving reproductive health in the Mangar district of Faridabad through awareness workshops, free health camps that provide medications and professional advice, cervical cancer vaccination drives, family planning consultations, along with screening more than 1500 individuals for cervical cancer and STDs. We have collaborated with a sanitary pads manufacturer to provide free pads and menstrual health and hygiene sessions in government schools across Delhi-NCR.
We recognised the need for a comprehensive education and developed a detailed sex education syllabus at the request of local educators in Mangar Village, which allows teachers and volunteers to host reproductive health awareness workshops in their communities. It features detailed lesson plans, age-appropriate content, and a variety of teaching resources. Acknowledging the rapid digital transformation in rural India, we also developed a bilingual reproductive health chatbot to provides round-the-clock access to reliable reproductive health information and addresses queries anytime.
Awards
Initially we organised fundraisers in the school for this project but, of late, we have received awards that have helped us sustain the project, with the most recent being a grant of $3000 from IB Global Youth Action in May 2024. In 2023, I was declared the Impact Initiative winner at the Harvard Model United Nations Conference and was given a grant of 1,50,000 for fieldwork. Pramerica Life Insurance declared us among the top 26 student-led social impact projects in India for its Emerging Visionary programme. Earlier this year, we were judged runners up at the CASTrips Global CAS Project Challenge and second runners-up at the Diamond Challenge India organised by the University of Delaware.
Going forward, we aim to conduct menstrual health workshops and sanitary pad distribution drives in over 150 government and private schools across Delhi NCR. We are planning 15 new health camps in five new rural areas, replicating our successful model in Mangar Village. Our goal is to screen and treat over 5,000 villagers for cervical cancer, STDs, and STIs, ensuring that comprehensive reproductive health services reach those who need them the most.
Growing up in the world’s most populated country, I find it imperative to improve the overall quality of reproductive and sexual health across states, starting with the worst-affected strata: rural teenagers.
The writer is a student of Shiv Nadar School, Noida.
Published - August 17, 2024 07:30 pm IST
