In Tejana´s village there is no electricity nor transport means. Despite all that, she manages to get the menstrual cups and educational workshops reaching there through Basti’s muddy roads. A small village in Achham to which you take more than two days to arrive from the province main city.

She is happy for that. She coordinates the trainers’ team of be artsy and is one of the first girls that participated in the project in 2017. From the beginning, she showed a lot of interest in the matter, and a high level of involvement. “Coverage in the area is very bad and Tejana helped us to contact some participants that were impossible to get in touch with” says Clara, CEO and co-founder of be artsy. When she started attending the be artsy workshops, she quickly realized that the Chhaupadi, the Nepalese thousand-year-old tradition that isolates women during their period, is not right. Before that, Tejana, like all the women in her community, isolated herself in a hut during her period days. She believed it to be a bad thing and used old rags when bleeding. She wasn’t even able to speak to her parents about the menstruation taboos.

Now she is studying in Achham’s main city, Mangalsen, to become a nurse. In the meantime, she works with be artsy coordinating other trainers who will be teaching in the local schools what she learned a few years ago and changed her life.

Tejana, thanks to the menstrual cups and the education workshops, feels clean, comfortable, and above all, sure of herself. She is not afraid of speaking her mind about the menstrual taboos, even before the elder people, as, like she herself says, she has got her ideas very clear. In fact, she has spoken with her parents about the menstruation and has succeeded in changing their minds about it.

She is convinced that it is oneself who has to start first eradicating the taboos.

Please donate now so more girls like Tejana live their menstruation naturally and change their lifes.

Text by Arrate Sarrionandia and Rupa Pandey, translation by Tere Salinero.
Photos by Clara Garcia i Ortés.

For just €1.80 a day you can change the future of a girl and prevent her from being forced to marry at 14 years old!

There are several ways in which you can get involved and sponsor a girl in Achham:

Teaming Group: 1 euro a month – become part of Rato Baltin Project!

Teaming Group: 1 euro a month – become part of the team and get your friends to help you sponsor her and avoid early marriage!!

Regular donation: to https://donorbox.org/againts-chhaupadi

Become a member: https://beartsy.org/associate/

🙂 Thanks!