SKV Gwalior: Sankalp – One Undertaking, Many Outcomes

EducationWorld July 2023 | Spotlight Feature

Girls at Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya, Gwalior (SKV) are encouraged to demonstrate integrity, honesty and moral fortitude. It is within this setting that they develop their own moral compass. To develop the sense of dignity of labour and to help them discharge their responsibilities towards the society, the girls are encouraged to undertake social service activities in school. Project ‘SANKALP’ is one of them.

Since 2012, the SKV girls have been guided by their principal Mrs Nishi Misra to seek opportunities for providing meaningful community service in and around their city. With her help, the girls conducted research and surveys for over 15 months and their data suggested that a large population of Gwalior lives in slums, with no access to basic services like water and sanitation, imposing severe hardships, especially on the female population. Hygiene and cleanliness, which is vital to women’s health, is poor and accorded low priority. Awareness and availability of hygiene products like sanitary napkins is absent. Where the basic needs for life are not available, these women cannot afford to buy expensive sanitary napkins available in the market. Thus they resort to unhygienic alternatives ranging from rags, leaves and even sand!

The principal and the students applied themselves to finding a way to supply sanitary napkins to the underprivileged women of a village in the city’s outskirts. After intense brainstorming and research, they identified a low cost sanitary napkin manufacturing unit. This fully indigenous machine was designed, created and tested by Mr. A. Muruganantham of Jayaashree Industries, Coimbatore. The raw materials are banana fibre and gel cotton, both of which are biodegradable. The low-cost sanitary napkins can be manufactured by students after minimal training. Mrs Nishi Misra travelled to Coimbatore to inspect the machine and convinced of its efficacy, she set the ball rolling to procure it.

Excited at the prospect of this hugely meaningful service, the team set about finding ways to finance this machine and the first consignment of raw material. Funds were raised from Funfairs, House Sales, contributions from the school’s alumni and from The Friends of Round Square, an international organisation, of which the school is a member. The machine arrived and was installed amidst great curiosity and enthusiasm among the students and staff. The simple training for working the machines was imparted to a pioneering group of staff and students.

Scindia Kanya Vidyalaya finally set up a manufacturing unit to produce low-cost sanitary napkins. The team targets to distribute the napkins to 250 women in the village of Jarga on the outskirts of Gwalior with a sustained, unbroken supply. The principal created batches of students who she trained to spend time with the women to educate them about the use and disposal of the napkins.

Many hospitals, NGOs and missions have approached the school expressing interest in purchasing this product on account of its unbelievably low cost. The huge demand for the product has set us thinking of working out a small scale industry model in order to make it self-sustaining. The principal commissioned her Commerce students to develop a Business Model Summary to set up the unit in villages as an entrepreneurial venture. The women of the village are organised into self-help groups around this undertaking. They gain livelihood as well as raise the standard of hygiene over a larger area.

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In the last 10 years, SKV has supplied 2000 napkins for flood stricken women in Kashmir (2014). During the Nepal earthquake (2015) also, the students sent sanitary napkins along with other relief material. In 2018, when the southern state of Kerala was struck by floods, the school set up work shifts to produce 6000 napkins in 48 hours for sending as relief. During the Covid pandemic in 2021, SKV sent 12,000 napkins to the department of Food & Civil Supplies for women in distress.

For this initiative, SKV principal Mrs. Nishi Misra has been awarded the Alexander Award by the Common-wealth Association for Science, Technology, Mathematics & Education (CASTME). Though SKV is an all-girls school, Mrs Misra encourages students of both genders to contribute ‘shram-daan’ (service by labour) and earn ‘volunteer hours’. Boys and girls of many schools in the country and abroad, sign up for the ‘shram-daan’ during youth festivals at the school.

This initiative of setting up a unit to produce and distribute sanitary napkins to underprivileged women is named SKV-Sankalp which in Sanskrit means, a resolution taken by SKV to help women live with dignity.

To learn more about the Sankalp initiative, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OMoVA3tUnQ.