The plight of the girl-child was the focus of attention penultimate week as the world marked the 2023 Menstrual Hygiene Day on May 28.
As to be expected, the day provided an opportunity for non-governmental organization, professional associations, and other support groups, to once again focus attention on the plight of the girl-child.
In Edo State, the state chapter of the Nigeria Association of Women Journalists, NAWOJ, used the event to embark on an awareness campaign to sensitize and also empower the girl-child in the state.
Led by the NAWOJ Chairperson in the state, Comrade Adesuwa Ehimuan, the body visited some secondary schools in Benin City where it engaged the students, mostly the girl-child, on menstrual hygiene, sex education, ovulation, and the coping methods for menstrual cycles.
Comrade Adesuwa Ehimuan in her speech identified several limiting factors which she said prevent women and the girl-child from reaching their full potential.
Among these are poor menstrual hygiene caused by lack of education, persistent taboos, and stigmas, restricted access to hygiene menstrual products due to their prohibitive cost, and poor sanitation infrastructure, stressing that these factors constitute a major obstacle to the ability of the girl-child to reach her full potential.
She was, however, optimistic that by 2030, the Menstrual Hygiene Day, first celebrated in 2014, will attain a level whereby no woman or girl-child is held back from reaching her potential as a result of mensuration, educational opportunities, health, and the overall social status of women and the girl-child around the world.
In particular, she urged the girl-child and women to summon the courage to break free from the “culture of silence” and learn how to speak out loudly about the issues affecting their well-being.
According to her, the biases against women and the girl-child will reduce or vanish when voices are pooled together to draw attention to their plight while also making sure that engagements with the critical stakeholders and decision makers are constructive and robust enough to cause a major shift in the way and manner menstrual hygiene and health issues are treated at both local, national and global levels.
The sensitization campaign for the 2023 World Menstrual Hygiene Day was sponsored by the Benin-Owena River Basin Development Authority, BORDA.
The NAWOJ train was deliberate in its choice of schools to visit. The train visited mostly female secondary schools in Benin, such as the New Era Girls College along the Upper Mission Road, Anglican Girls Grammar School, located in the Benin GRA, and a couple of others, where they distributed free sanitary pads and other hygiene products to over five hundred students.
This year’s Menstrual Hygiene Day is marked with the theme, ‘Making menstruation a normal fact of life by 2030’, which is targeted at vulnerable, indigent women and girls with the goal to make menstrual hygiene management a norm.
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