SPARSH has been working as a Panlot Training Organisation (PTO) for Watershed Cluster No. 16 of Pombhurna block of Chandrapur District. Under this programme our work is to build capacity of community on watershed development. We had organized awareness generation campaign on watershed development through street play and folk activities. Following the guideline of Vasundhara Watershed Development Agency, Pune we had commendably organized training of Women Self Help Group and users group on watershed development process and their role in this process.
Rural women and girls generally do not maintain cleanliness during menstruation period. As a result they become host of many infectious diseases. This is due to the lack of awareness among them and also due to the economic inability for adopting better precautions like- use of good sanitary napkins during menstruation period. There are different varieties of sanitary napkins are available in the market.
But they are unable to afford them. They just need to know the importance of hygiene and availability of low cost sanitary napkins. With this issue in consideration SPARSH is running Low Cost Sanitary Napkin Making Unit at our own working place at Gadchiroli under title “SAHAJ” sanitary Pad. These sanitary pads are made from high quality American wood pulp and blue sheet in highly safe and healthy environment. It is sterilized by high intensity ultra-violate rays.
Under the financial assistance from Women and Child development department of Maharashtra state SPARSH is running Women and Child assistance Cell at Police Station Chamorshi. The objectives of the Cells are to rebuild violated women’s self-esteem, self-worth and dignity; offer immediate services: crisis counselling, referrals to medical, psychiatric, educational and vocational services; police assistance; placement in institutions; legal aid etc. The cell counsellor creates socio-legal services for a large number of women who approach police to stop violence against them, enabling access to justice, prevention, and detection in cases like domestic violence, molestation, girl child sexual abuse etc.
These services augment the police system to match the needs of the violated women for psycho-socio-legal work. Using and sharing of existing infrastructure and network of the Police system by the trained social workers is a purposive strategy to work on the issue of violence against women. Till this date this cell had successfully settled the 62 cases.
Gadchiroli district is one of most vulnerable district in concern of malnutrition. In order to preserve health and prevent malnutrition, SPARSH had decided to provide seed and technique of kitchen garden to villagers. With the financial help from forest department we have selected 50 villages from each block and identified 100 families from each village, who have keen interest in creating kitchen garden and dedication to take care of it. Hence, in this project we had cover 2500 beneficiary families from all 5 division of forest of Gadchiroli district. We provide 12 types of seed of 36 gram weight to each family and 3 kg 60 gram unit to 100 families. We had organized workshop in which forest personnel taught technical knowledge of ‘Parasbag’.
At are the doors-less huts situated on the outskirts of the tribal village… Every female has to stay there with just a tattered mat and blanket for the while menstruation period. They are not allowed to enter the village and treated as untouchables.
SPARSH had taken the initiative of creating awareness in girls and women on menstrual health and start to create an atmosphere in tribal dominated village in favour of eradication of this fatal, shameful and unscientific custom. This year we had organized 12 awareness camps in very remote area of Gadchiroli with the financial support from ITDP, Gadchiroli.
Whole day schedule dedicated to promoting healthy practices during menses, eradication of incorrect information related with menstrual period, provide knowledge on reproductive and child health, age of adolescence and life skill, hygiene during menses, behavioural change communication methods etc. There were tribal women took an active part in this workshop and enhance their knowledge level in scientific area.
