Mardan's Educational Vanguard: Teachers Championing Menstrual Health in Schools
I was shocked, one of our facilitators reacted in disbelief, learning of some teachers infrequent use of undergarments. From this frank exchange to educators bravely sharing spaces, crafting playful poems for their students, and dissecting menstrual hygiene through case studies—the #LIMEPakistan sessions at two Human Development Foundation (HDF) schools in Mardan speak volumes of rigorous and vibrant engagement.
Ms. Nida Nasreen is conducting #LIME session with the teachers of HDF School in Mardan.
Why Menstrual Health Education Can’t Wait
The #LIMEPakistan project was launched in direct response to severe systemic deficiencies observed during our #40in4Campaign. We uncovered a tenfold crisis: not only were pervasive and harmful myths haunting students’ experiences of menstruation, but this was exacerbated by system-wide period poverty, teachers profound lack of preparation, and an unsupportive school environment. Society For Youth’s (SFY) #LIMEPakistan is a national vision focused on training teachers from diverse backgrounds across urban-rural centers, providing them a dynamic and culturally grounded curriculum, supporting them with SafePad sanitary products, and building a coalition of grassroots organizers.
Schools: Our Anchors for Community-Driven Change
The training sessions at HDF are integral to Society For Youth’s larger strategy: deploying schools as Community Anchors in the fight against menstrual illiteracy. Schools are far more than modest educational ventures; they are earnest, credible, and long-standing social institutions within their communities. Our broad-based model of organizing, grounded primarily in relationality as a vital imperative of collective action, seeks to mobilize these social institutions to foster local community development and lay the groundwork for national community engagement and leadership concerning menstrual healthcare. Our organizers prioritize sincere and deep relationships over mere transactional engagements, recognizing the integral value such values-based partnerships hold for long-term, sustainable, and large-scale replicable change.
It’s precisely through a discourse enabled by emphatic grassroots organizing that we are forging institutional coalitions as a broad-based systemic intervention against menstrual illiteracy. Along with providing immediate support to an age group most pervasively affected by a lack of menstrual health education, schools also pool the collective cultural acumen, human capital, and institutional resources that can empower a grassroots revolution in menstrual healthcare and education.
It’s this complex configuration of factors that allows schools to serve as revolutionary hubs: not only helping #LIMEPakistan train teachers and guide girls at scale, but also co-generating a system-wide movement towards school-based infrastructural reform, culturally relevant curricula, pedagogical integration, and human capital development. The #LIMEPakistan training sessions on January 31st and February 23rd at HDF Schools in Mardan are a powerful reminder of the deep labor and joy inherent in organizing for menstrual health education access.
The #LIMEGuide: A Curriculum for Transformative Learning
The #LIMEGuide curriculum has been meticulously drafted to cater precisely to the diversity of thought, faith, cultural, academic, and socio-economic backgrounds found across Pakistan. The teachers at this particular training session, for example, came from various backgrounds, with the overwhelming majority aged between 19-29, teaching primary, middle, and high school levels. They brought diverse academic expertise, ranging from Islamiyat (religious studies) to geography, social studies, and economics, alongside the typical sciences. Amidst such an incredibly diverse group, the guide’s more than 40 activities and a dozen case studies ignited a catalytic, productive, and at times entertaining creative-thought experiment for tackling systemic and perennial challenges like menstrual health. The curriculum’s focus on systems thinking in education and transformational capacity building is better materialized when we continuously cater to such significantly diverse groups of teachers. Each participating teacher received the #LIMEGuide to bolster their learning and provide a handy resource for classroom engagement.Based on SFY’s #40in4Campaign surveys, conducted prior to the current #LIMEPakistan Project, a significant percentage of students feel that teachers rarely provide guidance on menstrual health. A considerable number rely on relationships at home—particularly sisters, mothers, or cousins—for MHM information. Some also learn from friends, social gatherings, the internet, or even madrassas.
“This informal learning landscape is especially concerning, as numerous harmful myths can be further cemented through relationships within and outside families. Teachers, however, play a key role in advancing menstrual health, and by centering schools as community anchors for large-scale reform, SFY’s curriculum does just that.”
When asked about their source of MHM education, 53.79% cited Homes, Sisters, Mothers, or Cousins, while a smaller 6.35% named Friends. This aligns with observations during the #LIMEPakistan training, where an incredibly high—more than 90% of teachers—reported having received education from mothers, sisters, or family. The #LIMEGuide fosters culturally relevant pedagogy where teachers can not only see themselves in the case studies but actively relate them to the challenges and opportunities for “menstrual health education” in the contemporary socio-cultural landscape.
The significant priority of fostering culturally relevant pedagogy cannot be overstated. Our #LIMEGuide’s laser focus on cultivating critical consciousness and systems thinking in education towards institutional capacity development is necessitated by the pervasive problem of stigma and taboos. Our #40In4Campaign revealed that more than 14% of middle and high school students refrain from discussing MHM-related matters with anyone, considering it too sinful, immodest, and shameful to talk about. In such a perilous context, scientifically reliable information alone is inadequate; our teachers, serving as early life-mentors, must be equipped with a ‘lifestyle’ approach to menstrual health education, one that is culturally grounded.
Pedagogy in Action at HDF
The #LIMEGuide’s pedagogy is intensive—intensively focused on providing a window into intersectional issues. This training session at the HDF schools, with HDF teachers, integrated several different case studies and activities, fostering an environment for women’s health advocacy. Activities such as Tracking Your Period To Win Big underscore the significance of understanding the menstrual cycle and how tracking ovulation and menstrual phases can aid in achieving personal success. The #LIMEGuide’s crucial attention to pragmatism is critical, since curricula related to menstrual health education aren’t always actionable—often lacking the ability to foster creative dialogue on how to proceed beyond a moment of academic learning.
Other activities, like Making Puberty Easier for Younger Friends, redirect attention towards the challenges students face, constructively encouraging teachers to creatively approach menstruation—and menarche, for many the first dreadful encounter—in a fun, celebratory, and productive manner. During this activity, teachers at HDF were divided into groups, chose a leader to present their project, and then engaged in intensive, high-paced brainstorming, drafting, and writing ideas on how they could easily convey messages (in rhyme, story, poem) to students or other young ones in their communities.
In a broader socio-cultural and academic context where, as the #40in4Campaign report revealed, only 39.61% of middle and high school students received guidance on their first menses, activities like these not only refocus creative energies on menstrual health education but also cultivate deeper transformational capacity building. Previously disengaged teachers can more readily mentor students in creative ways—using rhymes and poems to talk about one of the most culturally siloed and sensitive topics. The #LIMEGuide restores agency, grounded in principles of culturally relevant pedagogy, where teachers guide the conversation on how best to adapt menstrual healthcare to their specific contexts.
Notably, the training at HDF was geared towards co-generating new directions in menstrual hygiene management. One case study focused on a local incident from Punjab where unsanitary menstrual health products caused rampant infections, highlighting the critical need to move beyond simply talking about healthy practices and actively evaluating alternative options for sustainable menstrual healthcare. Through this case study, teachers constructively engaged in discussing the use of insanitary products, how these products cause infections, what products are safe, and how to use those products hygienically. Such case studies not only create important culturally relevant pedagogical and educational conversations but also actively empower teachers to draw on their experiences and leverage their challenges to identify healthy alternatives pragmatically. Case studies like this reiterate the need for systemic and intersectional levels of analysis in addressing gaps in menstrual hygiene management in Pakistan.
Coupled with the case study, this training session also provided SafePads to the participants—a reusable, affordable, and award-winning hygienic product that women can reuse for up to one year. A key segment of our #LIMETraining sessions is foremostly focused on guiding teachers about SafePads. In a cultural landscape where menstrual health education is all but systemically non-existent, we must prioritize not only scientific, culturally relevant menstrual healthcare education but also sincere conversations on sustainability and affordability to expand menstrual healthcare access.
The #LIMEPakistan trainings, thematically vibrant, educationally dynamic, and culturally relevant, successfully put to test Society For Youth’s broad-based model of organizing. The focus of #LIMEPakistan is not simply educational and behavioral awareness but rather a sustainable investment towards systems thinking in education oriented towards menstrual healthcare. The openness of the teachers and the quality of their engagement only further enhance and attest to the validity and effectiveness of the relational model that Society For Youth employs in advancing healthcare by way of women’s health advocacy and women’s public leadership.
Shifting Cultural Taboos: Impact in Action: HDF’s Training Sessions Unveiled
#LIMEPakistan’s central goals include destigmatizing menstrual health by addressing deeply ingrained myths and taboo beliefs. The HDF sessions helped facilitate an engaging dialogue reminiscent of deep trust-building via the relational organizing model.
One activity focused on addressing myths about menstrual health.
Interestingly, one of the most common myths among teachers was not taking a bath during periods. This further reflects an observation we made during our earlier #40in4Campaign, where 30.85% of middle and high school students believed that taking a shower, bath, or touching cold or hot water is forbidden during menstruation. The gap in menstrual healthcare education cannot remain stigmatized; we must bring a determined effort to dispel such myths.
“ I was shocked, one facilitator remarked in disbelief, learning of the unusually long time some teachers shared, saying they changed their undergarments after a week. The training session’s bold and candid discussions facilitated an attitude shift towards healthier practices. Simply put, myths were deconstructed.”
While there’s a certain shock to observe teachers believing in the same myths as students—creating a sticky loop that reinforces harmful practices-it’s not about laying strict judgment, but rather about the urgent need for our teachers to be trained and educated in practicing and delivering menstrual healthcare education.
“#LIMEPakistan is leveraging relational power embedded in collective action to think in formative and new ways about community development and empowerment concerning menstrual healthcare.”
Breaking Out of the Silos; Impact in Action: HDF’s Training Sessions Unveiled
#LIMEPakistan training sessions are not standalone, siloed discussion moments, but rather deeply personal and transformational moments of solidarity and experiential learning. This is geared towards expanding access to menstrual healthcare education because it is critical to the success of such programs. One of the teachers at HDF shared how one of her students has an abnormal cycle because she menstruates 30 days a month and consequently remains absent from school. Through this training, armed with authentic knowledge of menstrual healthcare, and within an uplifting community of peers facilitated through open dialogue, the teacher felt empowered to take action—and committed to ensuring a welcoming environment for students.
Abnormal periods and absenteeism aren’t novel observations. During one of our #40in4Campaign sessions at a government school in the village of Ghumanwan, a girl bravely opened up about her continuous bleeding for approximately 21 days. But she expressed reluctance to share this information with her mother or teacher, unaware that this extended bleeding was abnormal. Furthermore, during the #40in4Campaign, 47.98% of middle and high school female students aged 13-18 shared that periods significantly affected their academic performance, leading to school absenteeism.
“#LIMEPakistan training sessions are not standalone, siloed discussion moments, but rather deeply personal and transformational moments of solidarity and experiential learning.”
Shall we remain mere spectators to such unforgiving revelations? Why should our schools—perfectly located in the public square of life-learning—be devoid of providing such critical care? If young girls cannot find much-needed guidance at schools, it only speaks of a system-wide failure to adapt to perennial challenges. It’s precisely through the delicate and tough work of intensive grassroots organizing that Society For Youth is redefining schools as community anchors. #LIMEPakistan training sessions aren’t simply dealing with perennial myths and taboos, but helping facilitate deeper dialogue about the larger systemic footprint the current lack of menstrual health education has.
“During one of our #40in4Campaign sessions at a government school in the village of Ghumanwan, a girl bravely opened up about her continuous bleeding for approximately 21 days. But she expressed reluctance to share this information with her mother or teacher, unaware that this extended bleeding was abnormal.”
In other words, how long will we simply embrace the fait accompli of young girls facing menarche and remembering it as a traumatic experience? How many girls have to miss school due to inadequate conditions for us to jump into action? A lack of menstrual healthcare education is causing enormous trauma, hazardous health conditions, and poor academic outcomes. When our teachers are aware and trained to create constructive brave spaces for such sensitive issues, our students feel welcomed, acknowledged, and supported.
“One of the teachers at HDF shared how one of her students has an abnormal cycle because she menstruates 30 days a month and consequently remains absent from school. Through this training, armed with authentic knowledge of menstrual healthcare, and within an uplifting community of peers facilitated through open dialogue, the teacher felt empowered to take action—and committed to ensuring a welcoming environment for students. Abnormal periods and absenteeism aren’t novel observations.”
Breaking Cycles: Realizing Broader Impacts
The dual-training sessions on January 21st and February 11th at HDF schools in Mardan have contributed in meaningful and strategic ways towards achieving our goals of training 1,000 teachers, investing in a women’s health organizing network, distributing free SafePad sanitary products, and jump-starting an inter-institutional and stakeholder framework that fosters long-term capacity for sustainable change.
Thanks to these sessions, another cohort of Pakhtun female teachers from Mardan now feel empowered with a menstrual health education toolkit. On one hand, they feel ready to tackle and deconstruct myths, guide students on their menstrual health journey, and destigmatize it via productive and fun classroom activities, poems, and rhymes. On the other hand, these sessions readied teachers to expand their matrix of analyses and approach menstrual healthcare from an intersectional, system-wide, resource-dense, and institution-grounded lens.
#LIMEPakistan’s extraordinary ability to construct shared spaces of vulnerability, leveraging relationality for collective action, dispelling harmful cultural myths and taboos, promoting sustainability in menstrual healthcare, platforming ”indigenous leadership,” and introducing free SafePads sanitary products is an incredible strategic asset for building community resilience.
“#LIMEPakistan’s extraordinary ability to construct shared spaces of vulnerability, leveraging relationality for collective action, dispelling harmful cultural myths and taboos, promoting sustainability in menstrual healthcare, platforming indigenous leadership, and introducing free SafePads sanitary products is an incredible strategic asset for building community resilience. “
Champions of Change: Our Gratitude
We are deeply grateful to facilitators Arooj, Nimra, and Nida for their tireless efforts in leading profoundly impactful sessions like these. Nida also serves as Head of Programming for #LIMEPakistan—a critical and important role in making the project a success. We also want to share our gratitude for Principal Ishaq, for his incredibly positive and welcoming response. It’s because leaders like Principal Ishaq that Society For Youth’s effort in laying the foundation of a large-scale institutional network is becoming a reality.
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About LIME Pakistan & SFY
LIME Pakistan is a transformative initiative by Society For Youth, dedicated to empowering communities and fostering sustainable change in menstrual health management across Pakistan. Through its unique Schools as Community Anchors model, LIME Pakistan aims to build local leadership, integrate comprehensive menstrual health education, and challenge societal taboos to ensure that every girl and woman can experience menstruation with dignity and knowledge.
Society For Youth (SFY) is a non-profit organization committed to fostering sustainable community development through grassroots organizing, education, and empowering local leadership. SFY’s broad-based model emphasizes relationality and collective action, working to address complex social challenges and build resilient communities from within.
To learn more about our work, donate, or support our mission, please feel free to reach out to us via info@society4youth.org. You can also visit the #40in4Campaign website for more insights into the foundational research that led to LIME Pakistan.