Patiala: Ruhpreet is a single mother, returned from the US in May last year with her four-year-old son. She had separation with her husband and came back to India from the US. Once here, she wanted to spend her time in social work. She started visiting slums with an aim to help women.

She has distributed over 5,000 sanitary napkins in the slum areas. Ruhpreet said it was her dream to set up a small unit to produce sanitary napkins.

Ruhpreet started working with an NGO- ‘Har Hath Kalam’ in Patiala wherein free education is provided to children from the backward class. Meanwhile, she also participated in the Anti Begging Drive.

During this time, she observed that teenagers and women who were married didn’t have much knowledge about maintaining menstrual hygiene and couldn’t take care of themselves and at the same time didn’t consider it important rather a taboo.

This is a fairly common issue all over the country. As per reports, of the 355 million menstruating women in India, only 12 percent use sanitary pads, and over 88 percent of women use alternatives such as cloth, ashes, and husk during menstruation, thereby causing severe reproductive health problems.

Ruhpreet wants to make a quality and affordable pad, accessible to all and plans to sell a pack of five sanitary pads for a sum of Rs 10.