Social enterprise Unipads India from Ahmedabad, Gujarat, empowers underprivileged women to manufacture and distribute high quality, low costs, reusable sanitary cloth pads, thus providing them and their families a source of livelihood. Women on Wings and Unipads India started collaborating on their joint mission of co-creating employment opportunities for women in rural India.
Sanitary pads provide income
Unipads India Private Limited (Unipads India) empowers women to manufacture and distribute Unipads’ reusable sanitary pads to other women and girls living in the rural and semi urban areas. It not only makes the product available to women and girls at a reasonable price and convenient manner, but also provides employment to women who work as distributors, so called ‘Kalyanis’. Each Kalyani is trained on Menstrual Hygiene Management and other aspects of menstruation and sales. At the start of the collaboration, Unipads provides work to 102 women who in return help their families move a step towards achieving financial stability.
Life continues during period
Unipads’ sanitary pads are environment friendly and are entirely made of cloth, unlike disposables which are made of plastic, which can lead to all kinds of infections. The pads last on an average for a year, which makes it ‘pocket friendly’. Since its inception in 2017, Unipads has distributed its pads amongst more than 800,000 women and girls nationally and internationally, thus helping them achieve menstrual hygiene. Not only that, without proper menstrual hygiene, girls would drop out of school for one week per month. Thanks to sanitary pads, girls are enabled to stay in school during their period.
Women on Wings and Unipads India
The collaboration between the two social enterprises focusses on reviewing Unipads India’s current business strategy and growth plan. Geeta Solanki, founder of Unipads India: “We aim at adding 500 new Kalyanis in the next year, so we are quite ambitious. Unfortunately we are unable to meet in person with their team, but in our weekly interactive strategy sessions we work on building our growth plan step by step. I am convinced the partnership with Women on Wings will bring us closer to our goal.”
