Time to talk about menstruation

NIDendeavour Aditi Gupta, along with two Ahmedabad-based male friends, is planning to launch a comic book to spread awareness about menstruation and shatter myths surrounding it. As she experienced and dealt with menstruation-related problems herself, Gupta trustworthy and easily accessible information on the subject was much needed."I believed quite a few menstrual myths until I started going to college. I can assert that having faith in these have been detrimental to my self esteem and confidence. I don't want girls to see periods as a curse or disease, but rather as a healthy bodily process. They should be fully informed about how to care for themselves during their periods," said Gupta. She first surveyed cities like Mehsana and Gandhinagar for the project. The findings revealed that the main problem for Indian women was the taboos associated with menstruation, due to outdated myths and lack of education. Based on the findings, Gupta, and her batchmates from Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Communications Technology — Tuhin Paul and Rajat Mittal launched their venture, 'Menstrupedia', an online illustrated guide that explained puberty, physiology and menstrual hygiene and management."There is a sense of embarrassment attached to menstruation, which led us to think of educating young girls through a comic book, so that they don't feel 'shame' about the topic," said Gupta, who tested the prototype of the book — 'Tales of Change' — with girls, teachers and parents."We have received many testimonials from site visitors saying they introduced younger female family members to Menstrupedia and it helped them dismiss misconceptions. Surprisingly, men have been participating equally if not more in sharing and spreading this initiative. However, women generally participate much more in conversations," said Gupta.In order to launch the comic book, the founders turned to crowd funding to raise Rs 4 lakh and have been able to raise close to Rs 50,000 so far. About 40% of contributors are men. After launching the comic book, the young entrepreneurs plan to convert it into an audio visual animation available for desktop and tablet devices and also translate it into various languages.