Wednesday, April 28, 2021

Our First Webinar - The Red Lotus

 Our First Webinar


With the sudden surge in COVID-19 cases, doing groundwork became difficult. Reaching out and visiting the sanitation plant is a danger to both their healths as well as ours. We originally focused more on tangible, hands-on projects than reaching out via social media. For some time we considered taking a break altogether, but we realised that difficult times call for new experiences. The Red Lotus conducted its very first webinar on 21st April 2021, in collaboration with The Rotaract Club of Ruia College, Mumbai.

Keeping our cause in mind, the topic of our webinar was Sustainable Menstruation. Like any first, the task was exciting and daunting at the same time. We researched more in-depth than we ever had and discovered some facts that even we were shocked to learn. For example, an average sanitary napkin is used for 5 hours at most, but the exact same napkin takes up to 43,80,000 hours to decompose. This is because by far the largest component of a DSN (disposable sanitary napkin) is plastic.

After compiling and condensing all our data into short digestible points, it was time to let our creative juices flow. Setting a theme, finding the most appealing format, and making an engrossing presentation in general, was quite the challenge. But after a lot of trial and error, and even more constructive criticism from our supporters, we finally made our best presentation. 

Now, came the most time-consuming part of this whole ordeal — the narration. While all three of us are fairly good at public speaking, none of us had any experience with doing it online. And let me tell you, speaking to an audience online is a whole other ball game than speaking to them in real life. Perhaps the internet connection can go haywire at any second, maybe you've been sharing the wrong tab this entire time, maybe you've been muted this entire time, or what if your background has that super embarrassing toy from when you were two? To cut it short, we were anxious. After practice after practice, we finally settled on a flow we were comfortable with.

And now, the day of reckoning, the day of our webinar. The three of us had a 30-minute motivation meeting and we were enthralled to get the show on the road. To say the webinar went well would be an understatement, the presentation went smoothly and the audience was ebullient. Ah, the fruit worked hardest for is always the sweetest. 
The webinar was a wonderful learning experience! Our second webinar, with Vanita Vibhag, was a success too. 

We, at The Red Lotus, are definitely looking forward to holding another webinar very soon. Hope we see you then!

Ishita Desai,
Co-founder
The Red Lotus



Thursday, April 15, 2021

The Red Lotus Project

Introduction to the project


My school had assigned us a project about plastic disposal, this was before the pandemic broke out, so I and my project partners decided to visit the local sanitation plant.
This picture was taken by my friends and me at the waste disposal facility in our locality.  There we talked to the workers and found out that while people do segregate wet and dry waste, they don't properly dispose of their used menstrual product...
 
Living in a progressive and well-educated society, although we certainly weren't unaware of the societal stigma surrounding menstruation, we were still shocked to discover another side of this problem. Improper disposal of menstrual waste was a facet of the taboo surrounding menstruation we had never thought of. It was after this visit that we realized how deep-rooted the disposal of menstrual products truly is. 

The sanitation workers had pitiful accounts about how, while being given the necessary equipment to carry out the segregation process in a healthy way, they are simply not able to do so due to the callousness of the residents. We were informed about how they have a proper machine to dispose of sanitary pads, but due to the unwillingness of menstruators to properly wrap their pads/tampons in a newspaper, they are not able to make use of it. Thus, it is all collectively incinerated, the consequences of which are environmental pollution. 

The experience was eye-opening. I can only imagine that if this prevails in a literate, educated society, what the situation must be in parts of rural India. I and my friends wanted to change the situation of the workers for the better. 

So, we started The Red Lotus Project, a project aimed at spreading awareness about the proper disposal of menstrual waste and destigmatizing menstruation. I, Ishita Desai, am a co-founder of it.
 The project mainly focuses on encouraging women to wrap their sanitary napkins properly, and ensuring that the sanitation workers are equipped with all necessary implements to carry out the segregation.

This is the first step in many to come.
Be sure to follow us on our socials to join us on our journey to make change one woman at a time!