GARIMA : Where There’s a Will : Niloufar Pourzand

by Niloufar Pourzand

One of my most fulfilling professional experiences was leading the largest UNICEF Field Office in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh (UP) India from 2013 to 2016. The State of UP is home to 240 million people. Like the rest of India, UP has witnessed significant progress in various fields. However, it is also affected by many social, economic, cultural and political challenges including those adversely affecting the rights and well-being of young girls.

It was in this context that UNICEF UP with the support of the IKEA Foundation planned, designed, implemented and completed an exciting project called GARIMA (Dignity in Hindi). GARIMA was designed to empower adolescent girls through raising awareness around Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) and through MHM, also address girls’ education, safety, privacy, child marriage and other critical social issues.

An initial UNICEF study revealed that most adolescent girls did not know what was happening to their bodies around the time of menstruation, nor did they know how to take care of themselves. They missed school during menses, suffered from a lack of privacy to change and clean themselves.   They also faced additional cultural taboos especially during this time. This data allowed us to modify the project to ensure its success.

UNICEF collaborated with relevant Government offices, as well as with a number of highly regarded and well positioned civil society organizations (CSOs) and community workers in target villages of three districts of UP. Fortunately, MHM was a Government priority and had strong support from Government officials, including Chief Secretary Yadav and his wife, herself an MP at the time. 

 During the course of this four year project, thousands of adolescent girls were reached through peer groups of approximately 25 members each. A trained female community worker facilitated regular meetings. Information on MHM was disseminated and these girls were encouraged to express themselves, thereby building their confidence as well as nurturing and developing their negotiation and leadership skills.

With the support of community workers and CSOs, UNICEF developed relevant training material which the project shared with these young girls. This training prepared the girls to engage with their families and other decision-makers on issues that mattered to them. The support of local officials and parents was also key to the success of GARIMA.

I was deeply inspired by these young girls each time I attended their peer group meetings. Their enthusiasm to learn more about their own bodies, and their thought-provoking questions never failed to astonish us. They seized the opportunities provided by GARIMA to expand their horizons within their communities. GARIMA allowed them to connect with some of their most important, and in some ways, most basic needs and aspirations and helped pave the way for a brighter future.

Their newly acquired self-confidence allowed these young women to engage with elected officials and advocate for better conditions. Access to safe drinking water, building of separate toilets at school, construction of incinerators in the village for their sanitary towels, or creating a private space at the community baths in the village were among their successful demands. The girls were also able to convince their parents to create a small private space in their homes, using an old sari so they could change with dignity/safety.  They could negotiate with the family to delay their marriage until they completed their education. Some of these young women became leaders/pathbreakers in their families and communities.

We often took our donors and other visitors to GARIMA villages/meetings as it was a project with tangible outcomes. The newly acquired knowledge and confidence of these girls resulted in positive changes in their homes and villages. 

The girls were a pleasure for us to interact with. The IKEA Foundation CEO and team were very satisfied with the project and in fact the daughter-in-law and young grand-daughters of the founder of IKEA visited our project, as did some UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors.

While the project has now been completed, it continues to have a positive and long-term impact on the lives of many girls. Many UNICEF documents, training material, lessons learned etc. from GARIMA have been used and applied elsewhere in India and in other countries. But of course, as always – the issue of sustainability of any such project is a challenge. Although UNICEF and its partners have tried their best to ensure the lessons learned and gains of GARIMA are not lost – continuation is not guaranteed.

Overall,  it was one of my favourite projects as Chief of Field Office. I continue to talk about this project with my students in International Development. 

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