The Arka Initiative is a response to the need for tangible and practical support on issues about sexual and reproductive health in Sri Lanka. It is led by a group of young doctors, psychologists, lawyers, and researchers who are advised by senior doctors and psychologists.
They recently implemented the second part of their Sustainable Sanitation project, aka. the pad project, after observing that a vast majority of menstruating women in Sri Lanka don’t use pads or tampons, making period poverty rife in Sri Lanka. This project aims to address this issue by providing reusable sanitary pads to underserved women in all 25 districts of the country. These sessions include an educational programme on sexual reproductive health (SRH), where safe spaces are created for conversations and questions on pertinent but taboo topics.
This project aims to reduce period poverty nationwide by remedying the lack of access to hygienic sanitary napkins. Brunch spoke to The Arka Initiative Head of Operations Dilki Wijeyesekera for more information on this project. She explained that the process of this project includes an educational programme session that creates a safe space for women to ask questions about their menstrual and reproductive health. The programme also introduces these women to financially sustainable, reusable pads, with the hopes of giving back the control of their health, the confidence to participate in society, and menstruate with dignity.
For this aspect of the project, they partnered up with Lalitha – a lady from Kandy who manufactures reusable pads. “We did this on a preorder basis, where we would tell her how many pads we required and she’d meet it in no time. She’s quite skilled in her craft.”
Misconceptions and challenges 
Talking about what prompted them to initiate this programme, Wijeyesekera explained: “What we realised during our sessions is that most women can't afford normal pads, so many resort to using cloth. Due to their periods, children neglect work and parents refrain from going to work, meaning that they cannot afford to financially sustain their family. The reusable pads were a convenient way to alleviate this problem.” She also explained that these women opt to use cloth instead of pads, which is unhealthy and unhygienic, as they use any regular old material lying around the house.
Once they realised what the core problems were, they approached the LA Pad Project, which offered them a grant of $ 25,000 to implement this project. After conducting the necessary research, they got in touch with Saral Design Solutions in India – who make machines that manufacture pads. The machine was supposed to be here by now, but due to the Covid situation both in Sri Lanka and India, the delivery was delayed, but they are optimistic that it will be here by June. Once the machine arrives, they plan on manufacturing and distributing their own brand of pads – Adithi by Arka – to underprivileged women from rural areas of the country. “We had many donors from Sri Lanka who supported this project and helped us out a lot,” added Wijeyesekera.
We asked Wijeyesekera if they had plans to sell these pads to citizens that can afford to purchase them, to which she said that they don’t plan on manufacturing on the scale that other mainstream pad brands do, but if people are willing to try them out after they’ve covered distribution to the rural areas, then they may purchase them. They aim to join hands with orphanages and hospitals – places where they already provide pads for free – and offer them their brand of pads.
The first stage of their pad project started in Mathugama, where they observed that many women are uneducated on the topic of sanitary napkins, and are also faced with the stigma that it is taboo to purchase sanitary products from a man. Wijeyesekera stated: “We spoke to a male shop owner, who lamented that they don’t receive sales for pads because of this taboo. Shops run by women have a fairly steady business. We have managed to conduct educational programmes to help women understand that menstruation is normal, and purchasing pads is not wrong.”
Conducting a project of this scale is no walk in the park. Talking to Wijeyesekera on the challenges they faced, she noted that from an operations point of view, their biggest issue is going to be appealing to the target market. “When we visited pharmacies, what they said is people are more likely to purchase products that have been advertised with nice models, even if it’s not healthy for you.” They might not be able to build their brand’s presence off the bat, with many other brands already capturing the mass audience, but they are hopeful they can make it work.
[caption id="attachment_137130" align="alignleft" width="314"]
"What we realised during our sessions is that most women can't afford normal pads, so many resort to using cloth. Due to their periods, children neglect work and parents refrain from going to work, meaning that they cannot afford to financially sustain their family. The reusable pads were a convenient way to alleviate this problem" The Arka Initiative Head of Operations Dilki Wijeyesekera [/caption]
The taboo surrounding contraceptives
Alongside this programme, they also conducted sessions on contraceptives as part of their SRH initiative. Describing the main problem behind the non-usage of contraceptives, Wijeyesekera explained: “For starters, it’s the fact that having sex is taboo. We spoke to Lanka – a lady in Mathugama and who we also hired to run our pad machine project – who told us that men are scared that, if women use contraception, they will cheat on them.” Wijeyesekera added that the woman’s husband had made ridiculous claims like “if you wear an IUD(intrauterine device), and there is a thunderstorm, you will get struck by lightning” and “you don’t wear a shower cap every time you shower, so why use a condom?” Because of her husband’s reluctance to use contraceptives, the lady has nine kids – all of whom she is struggling to care of and provide for. Wijeyesekera added that these villagers also don’t really know what to ask for at a shop in terms of contraception, and that it’s highly taboo to ask a doctor about it. So, what those at The Arka Initiative do is educate them on birth control pills like “Mithuri” (Sri Lankan birth control pill), which costs slightly over Rs. 100 for a month’s worth of pills. On this note, we explored how the locally manufactured birth control pill has many adverse side effects; we asked them if they hope to begin manufacturing their own brand, to which Wijeyesekera stated that it is not in their plans right now. “Making contraceptives looks more on the medical aspect, which we do have – there are many doctors on board at Arka – but this is not something we are looking at right now.”
It was also recently brought to light that the SRH content in the government-approved science textbook contained no information on contraceptives and condoned victim-blaming. We asked Wijeyesekera if she thought that affected the mentality of people in rural villages. “I would say it does. When we started Arka in 2018, we created a proposal to change this textbook and to include information on important subjects such as rape. We were, unfortunately, unable to take it forward, but we hope to bring it forward soon and make a change.”
Their biggest hope with their projects is to create awareness on SRH in Sri Lanka. “Every time we go out of Colombo, it’s a shock to see these women’s lack of knowledge. There are 30-40-year-old moms who don’t even know how to tell their children what menstruation is.” The Arka Initiative has a target to educate and distribute pads to all the districts in Sri Lanka, which they haven’t been able to meet yet due to Covid; so far, they have covered eight to 10 districts up to now and are optimistic that they will cover the rest very soon.