Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance

We have set up our manufacturing facility in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India to make 3,000 pads/day. Saathi is launching by embarking on a 1,000,000 Pad Initiative with Ekal Vidyalaya, one of India’s largest education NGOs, which has a network of over 56,000 schools in every states in India to distribute 1M pads to rural girls in Ekal villages. Ekal has identified a female healthcare worker in each of the 100 villages Saathi plans to launch its initial 1,000,000 pad initiative this year.

While globally maternal mortality is declining, the most vulnerable women are still being left behind. In Guatemala indigenous Maya women are more than twice as likely to die from childbirth than non-indigenous women. Fear of public hospitals—stemming from language barriers, mistreatment by staff, institutional complexity and discrimination—leads women to refuse referral when complications arise during home births.

Focus is on one of the most disadvantaged but neglected populations in the world, the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes DNTs in India with population of 110 million (Govt of India NCDNT Report Vol 2, 2005-06), have among the worst gender inequalities, women still subjected to medieval atrocities & barbaric penalties e.g. branding tip of their tongue with iron, taking out coin from hot boiling oil, strong grip of Caste Councils, have rigid patriarchy, treated as born criminals due to tag of criminality since 1871.

Economic dependence is a primary injustice facing out of school girls. With the world’s youngest population and endemic unemployment, family resources in Uganda are stretched and girls do not get the same opportunities as boys. Less than 50% of girls complete primary school and less than 1% finish secondary school in rural areas; once a girl leaves school she is less able to seek resources. With prevalent teenage pregnancy and the highest HIV/AIDS rate nationwide, there is a vulnerable population of girls in Western Uganda engaging in risky behaviors like sex-work or early marriage.

In the last ten years, various institutions across Pakistan, including the government, have attempted to introduce solar cookstoves to off-grid communities, but failed. Studying past failures, and after conducting a pilot study specifically to test clean cookstoves in Bedian - an off-grid village 20 kilometers southwest of Lahore - we have gained a deep understanding of the problems associated with promoting clean cookstoves in Pakistan. Developing the right product is one of several other fundamental pre-requisites to success.