Project RISHI Trip 2024

Sita Rajaram Public School & Polytechnic College, Mettupatti, Hiranyamangalam, Tamil Nadu

Purpose of Trip

• Educating the students on taking better care of their health and addressing stigmas relating to certain health issues within the community

• Empowering students to take charge of their health

Challenging Stigmas 

• Menstruation: In the effort to raise awareness and knowledge about menstruation within the teenage female population, part of our curriculum focused on dispelling stigmas through menstruation education. In rural India, this topic is generally approached with secrecy, if approached at all. This leads to a significant lack of understanding surrounding menstruation–women may not know when a health problem has arisen and be too afraid to talk about it, perpetuating unsafe habits and increasing the likelihood of long-term health issues. Teaching women about this natural process serves as an important step to destigmatizing menstruation. 

• Alcoholism: Alcoholism is a systemic issue that is intertwined into communities within Rural India. During the trip, we saw that it was deeply rooted into student’s lives, essentially normalized. The overall attitude was unserious, with the students making jokes and seeing drinking as an activity with no severe consequences, enabling many of their drinking problems to be overlooked. 

Who We Worked With

• On this trip we partnered with Community Action for Rural Development (CARD), an NGO based in Tamil Nadu. CARD works to eliminate poverty by improving access to education and improving livelihoods through health and environmental development. CARD has done a lot of work to improve access to education for young girls, and has implemented countless projects including afterschool programs, interactive panels, and distribution of school supplies. The NGO also places an emphasis on environmental development initiatives and has done work involving habitat conservation. CARD has also worked to improve the livelihood of many families distributing sewing machines and providing tailoring training to many women, allowing them opportunities for self employment and independence. CARD has now extended its work into the state of Maharashtra through the opening of a branch in Nagpur.

Daily Recap

• Monday: Due to it being a local holiday in India, the schools were closed and instead we visited local attractions under the guidance of one of the teachers we were working with on the trip. The closest large town to Mettupatti, Hiranyamangalam is called Trichy, and it’s home to one of the largest Hindu temples in the world, which we were able to see. Once we came back to the college, where we stayed in the dorms, we had a meeting with the principal and vice principal in order to discuss the teaching schedule for the following week at both the school and the college. As they are both on the campus, we collectively decided to alternate days teaching in both locations. We finished the night by finalizing some materials and reviewing what we were going to be teaching the following day and then watching a Tamil movie with some of the hostel boys.

  
  

• Tuesday: This was our first official day of teaching. We started off at the college and we had two rounds of class. Our first class was to first and second year students and the second was to more second year and third year students. We used the one interactive smart board on campus to teach the students about leprosy and dengue fever through slideshows and interactive games such as jeopardy, which they really enjoyed. After our teaching day was done, some of the college girls brought us to a nearby store to get some snacks and we spent some time with them during their study hours outside, where we also worked on finalizing the materials for the next day.

• Wednesday: We started our day early today and visited a nearby temple with the vice principal before classes started. Once we came back, we made our way to the school's interactive smart board room to teach our three batches of the day. This school had grades LKG-10th, but we only worked with the 4th-10th graders at the request of CARD. We split the batches into 4th/5th, 6th/7th, and 8th/9th/10th graders and also taught them about leprosy and dengue fever. The children were more interested in the interactive games but we made sure to quiz them throughout the slideshows. After classes, we spent the rest of the evening at the school, visited the small nearby shop again for more snacks, and ended the day with more material revision.

• Thursday: This day we were at the school again to teach about the second half of our material; skin, breast, cervical cancer, and menstruation. In the rural area we were working in, cervical cancer and menstruation are still considered sensitive topics, and in order to be culturally aware, we only taught these two topics to the girls separately. Today we utilized different worksheets and more games such as a skit competition to teach the material to the children. When it came to menstruation education, it proved to be far more useful to share each of our personal journeys to be more personable to the children. After teaching, we stayed behind and answered the many questions they had and played badminton and dodgeball with the 9th and 10th graders. We also celebrated one of their birthdays by singing and cutting a cake! 

• Friday: This was our last day of the trip! We returned to the college today to also teach about cancers and menstruation. Here, we made sure to teach all of the students per the request of CARD in order to spread awareness. Everyone would learn about these topics and share the knowledge of them to the women in their lives. We incorporated a similar style of teaching with skits and although the college students were more shy, we were able to have lots of fun in the process. 

After almost a week, we finished teaching and had to say goodbye to all the students and teachers, marking the end of a memorable and extremely rewarding experience.

Highlights and Our Impact

Throughout the trip, we had a chance to discuss stigmatized topics including menstruation with the students. The discussion sparked a lot of curiosity in younger students, and we were able to answer their questions about menstruation and personal questions as well. We noticed the stigmatization of the topic during our conversations with the college students as many became uncomfortable with the topic and even left the room as we spoke. Through our work, we were able to empower the students to speak openly about taboo topics like menstruation. By sparking open conversations about menstruation, we hoped to make the students a little more comfortable talking about it. Some students shared personal stories with us and it was so rewarding to make strong connections with the students.