About the Organization

UNICEF, the United Nations agency for children, works to protect the rights of every child, especially the most disadvantaged and those hardest to reach. Across more than 190 countries and territories, we do whatever it takes to help children survive, thrive and fulfil their potential.

We provide and advocate for education, health and nutrition services. Protect children from violence and abuse. Bring clean water and sanitation to those in need. And keep them safe from climate change and disease.

Project Background

 India is home to the largest number of adolescents in the world, representing one-fourth of the country’s total population (Census 2011). Gender inequalities impact 50 percent of these adolescents who are girls, their education, health, and social participation (Free Standards Group 2016). Menstruation is a recurrent monthly occurrence in lives of girls, women, transmen, non-binary persons. Menstruation is a crucial part of reproductive process, that starts during adolescence and continues till age of 45-50 year. Despite the significant role of menstruation in ensuring continuity of human race, it’s ironical that millions of girls across the world are denied the right to manage their periods in a dignified manner. The reasons for this exclusion can be either economic, social, cultural or a combination of these. This irony underscores the need to focus on normalization of menstruation in lives of millions of menstruators. Menstrual hygiene management (MHM) as a program focuses on ensuring access to safe materials to adsorb or collect menstrual blood; enabling access to facilities for the safe disposal soiled menstrual management and access to right information about menstruation. The history of menstrual hygiene management in India moved from deep, uncomfortable silence in this matter two decades ago to the present phase when India pro-actively participates in the global Menstrual Hygiene Management on 28th May. From being absent in public health discourse/agenda for around 50 years to having a dedicated program on MHM all the States in the country, menstrual hygiene program covered a long way. Though there is a positive momentum, especially in terms providing access to menstrual products to girls to manage periods in a safe manner, socio-cultural barriers leading to stigmatization of menstruators and poor waste management continue to be a challenge. The reasons for these challenges need to be understood through overall sectoral overview. Different Ministries look after different aspect of menstrual hygiene program like: • The Ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) works on menstrual awareness and supply of sanitary napkins. • Ministry of Jal Shakti through its Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen program works towards ensuring toilets in households so that girls and women can have private space to change used menstrual absorbents. • Ministry of Woman and Child focusses on needs of those girls who are not in school. • The Ministry of Education is responsible for ensuring that girls in educational institutions have access to safe, functional toilets and changing rooms. • The Home Ministry, Tribal welfare Ministry and the Ministry of Sports and Youth Affairs ensure menstrual products and gender segregated toilets remain accessible to girls and women residing in institutions under their domain. While it is encouraging to see that various Ministries are involved in MHM in the country, the challenge lies in their working together and not in silos. The information on work done by each Ministry is not available as a cohesive, coherent, comprehensive compiled data for use in the public domain, besides being an impediment for proper program monitoring that can guide program planning. Conscious convergent action by the Ministries can help in making the program robust and responsive to the needs of the girls and women besides addressing key programmatic challenges in a holistic way. The proposed program partnership is proposed to help conduct a landscape analysis of MHM policies, program implementation, monitoring across Ministries at national key stakeholder departments at state level. The overarching objective will be to find out the key milestones that have been attained as well as key challenges to recommend areas of improvement for systems strengthening. The methodology should involve: -secondary literature review from India -visit to 2 high performing and 2 not so well performing States for visiting 2 rural and urban communities per State, meeting key stakeholders like school children, parents/ care givers, schoolteachers/ wardens of Government girls residential schools and few girls out of schools. The necessary permissions for the visits will be obtained jointly with UNICEF and the selected partner NGO. - key informant interviews with sectoral stakeholders at National and State level - Based on all the above an overview report of menstrual hygiene management programs, policies, and gaps across national and State level will be prepared. A pan India perspective needs to be presented -two rounds of stakeholder consultations at National level will need to be facilitated, one with development partners and other with key national and state level Government counterparts. - Based on consultations the draft overview report shall be further refined and a final document should be submitted with recommendations for Strengthening Menstrual Hygiene Management programs in India

Expected Results

 1- After the inception meeting- one implementation plan should be proposed by the selected NGO partner
2- Report of secondary literature review
3- Field visit reports including key aspects from interviews
4- Report of key informant interviews at National level
5- overview report of menstrual hygiene management programs, policies, and gaps across national and State level will be prepared
6-report of 2 rounds of stakeholder consultations at National level: one with development partners and other with key national and state level Government counterparts.
7- Final document should be submitted with recommendations for Strengthening Menstrual Hygiene Management programs in India

How to Apply

Application Deadline Jun 2, 2026

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