EDUCATIONAL EMPOWERMENT

The Unatti Girls’ Health Empowerment Education Program, created in 2018, provides transparent and culturally thorough health education to young girls and boys in Nepal. This program breaks deep cultural stigma and myths and works to prevent discrimination especially around themes of menstrual health management and reproductive health.

Because our program is successful, an empowered and educated community of young girls will be prepared at the onset of menstruation to engage in open and shame-free discourse about personal health, will have access to appropriate sanitary products, and will normalize co-ed peer awareness around these themes.

Unlike children in the United States, young girls in Nepal are not afforded simple menstruation education. In fact, the centuries-old Nepali cultural tradition of chaupadi dictates that girls & women must be separated from their homes and their loved ones each month during menstruation. Some girls are sent to huts, restricted from religious activities, from their own kitchens and even from touching water. Young girls are isolated and are shamed and lonely as they are separated from every sense of normalcy and safety in their lives.

Girls in Nepal are left blind to a basic understanding of their bodies.

This program uplifts not only young girls, but also our team of health workers. These volunteer health workers are social work student interns from the nearby Kadambari Memorial College of Science and Management. Through Unatti’s partnership with the college, these college students earn academic credit teaching GHEEP workshops to the community. This promotes close connections, rapport, and trust between the health workers and the community members whom they will one day serve professionally.

A growing number of nonprofits in the region have made it their mission to help Nepalese girls rise above the stigma and to change this isolating tradition. Unatti Foundation is proud to be one of the pioneers of these efforts with our Girls Health Empowerment Education Program. Unatti Foundation’s team of health workers are visiting 100’s of classrooms in both the Kathmandu valley and rural villages as well and encouraging both girls and boys to understand their own health and well-being.