Paint it Red Foundation

322 million women in India are victims of period poverty. The levers of the problem are myriad -

Religious and cultural barriers force menstruators to isolate reducing their participation in public life;

Lack of coherent body literacy strips them from agency;

Socialized myths and stigmas prevents them from exercising proper hygiene;

Lack of basic healthcare makes menstruators resort to using leaves, old scraps of cloth and even bamboo as absorbents.

This results on 1 in 5 girls dropping out of school annually at menarche.

We provide body literacy to menstruators and non-menstruators with adaptive and interactive curriculum design focusing on early intervention to reduce period poverty. The three pillars of our work include: Development of teaching toolkits and gamified content, Dissemination of content with sensitivity and through constant innovation, and Data collection through consistent monitoring and evaluation.

A prototype of our workbook for 8-10 year-olds: https://drive.google.com/file/...

Paint it Red primarily works with adolescents aged 8-12 years old residing in semi-rural and rural geographies. They may have different physical and intellectual abilities, and may have different sexual orientations.

Our community intervention with this group showed that 71% of the population does not know why they have their periods or anything about it before they start menstruating.

I was 13 years old when I started my periods. My mother sat me down, showed me a pad and told me how it attaches to my underwear and how to dispose it when it is full. She then proceeded to tell me all things I was NOT supposed to do on my menstruating days - enter the kitchen, wash my hair, participate in religious activities, and not to discuss this with men in the room. As I complied, the barriers kept increasing.

My team identifies as people who menstruate and faced discrimination, either at workplace or in personal life.

Our proximity to the problem and core value that periods is a basic healthcare right, makes us an extremely motivated group with a mission.

Through our interventions we have directly impacted 30,000 beneficiaries across 10 states in India. This includes menstruators aged 8-35, with more 60% of them residing in semi-rural and rural regions.

Our model is focused on filling gaps in the menstrual health management ecosystem. The curriculum we are designing borrows knowledge from existing intellectual property but adds on important features: Social Emotional Learning tools, Age appropriate and life-cycle approach, ease of use, activity-based modules, teaching tools like workbooks, helpful animated links and so on.

Dissemination through partnership has also helped in increasing capacity of organizations with existing programs but lack of resources. We are also developing a learning management system which will have an in-built teacher training and sensitization module for public schools to leverage without adding extra burden. Our model works on identifying these gaps and provide solutions that benefit our target audience and the people who work with them.

Our data collection tools have given us unique data points on menstrual literacy levels, habits, and perception which has not comprehensively and coherently been documented. We want to empirically prove that early interventions can bring small but effective habitual changes that result in better health outcomes at an individual as well as aggregate level.

Paint it Red primarily works on SDGs 3, 4, and 5.

We are serving a population of 23 million adolescent girls who are out of school annually due to their periods. Our target is to reduce this drop out rate by 10% in the next 5 years. We recognize that there are several drivers to the problem.

We will measuring impact through surveys and school data analysis.

Our outputs for the next 5 years will include a teaching tool for age group 8-12 year olds, a learning management system with built-in AI features, and a report on the state of menstrual health management at school level.

In the past 3.5 years, we have constantly tested our assumptions and. worked on updating our programming based on our findings.

We surveyed 20% beneficiaries in 4 states and found the following:

62% - started tracking their periods on a calendar

72% - displayed accurate knowledge on why they menstruate

71% - were no longer ashamed of their periods

Early intervention through body literacy has proven consequences on adult health outcomes, lowering of stigmas, and self-confidence.

5 Full time Staff

50 project-based educators

6 expert advisors

3 tech support (external)

We established Paint it Red in September 2019.

Team: A group of Indian women with different sexual orientations, learning abilities, and socio-economic backgrounds work together to develop and deliver adaptable curriculum to in an extremely diverse country.

Curriculum: A core value of our organization is to develop and deliver inclusive curriculums as well as usage of language like menstruators which reaffirms that not all who menstruate are women and not all women menstruate.

Research: We are working with partners to understand experiences of persons with disabilities like Down Syndrome and Autism who menstruate as well as persons with visual impairment.

Paint it Red is a registered non-profit organization in India, equivalent of a 501(3)c in the US. Our method to maintain a steady revenue is through dedicated funds through corporate social responsibility partnerships. We also charge a nominal service contract to our dissemination partners - non-profit organizations (international and domestic), public schools, and the government.