20 Annual Report A N N U A L OPV ERR VOI EJWE C T FBI NAA NAC EL RAE P O R T 20Goals & Objectives Gross Company Profit From the Founder's Desk It was the summer of 2015 I was volunteering at primary school in Ghana, exuberant to make a difference by teaching Math and English. At the end of the day, I wanted to use the toilet but could not, because there was no toilet. The instance didn't let me sleep that night as I delved deeper only to discover the long lasting impact of this. During my course of stay in Ghana, I observed that girls in the community skipped school 3 to 4 days a month during their periods and often used material that was highly detrimental to their health. There was limited, often misleading information about menstrual health. The fact that it wasn't limited to that community but was a global phenomenon made us establish Project Baala. Project Baala began in 2016 with an aim to transform the way women and girls approach menstruation. Enhancing awareness, accessibility and sustainability, our endeavour is to normalise menstruation and ensure women and girls adopt informed and hygienic practices towards it. Since its inception, Project Baala has reached four countries and 16 States in India, touched 175,000 women and girls, conducted 900+ workshops spread across 16 states and distributed 525,000 sanitary pads. The year 2020 has been exceptionally unpredictable and challenging. Despite the shortfalls, we realized that our passion for the cause of menstruation as a team drove us and helped us achieve some important landmarks. Be it launching a financially sustainable model for the organization or delving into relief work. We aimed to reach women and girls till the last mile and none of this could have been achieved without collaboration. Thank you for being a part of this journey that transformed us and empowered thousands of women and girls to take charge of their menstrual health and hygiene. Soumya Dabriwal 1 About Us In India, Only 48% of the female population has access to safe menstrual protection leading to severe repercussions on health, productivity and education which plague the 335 million menstruating women in the country. 40,000 women lose their lives to poor menstrual hygiene annually. 23 million girls drop out of school at the onset of puberty every year. 31% women report a drop in productivity and income due to loss of 2.3 days of work monthly. With an aim to bridge the aforementioned gaps, Project Baala was founded in 2016 to educate and empower women and girls about menstrual hygiene. Addressing key accessibility issues related to menstrual hygiene products and information, Project Baala has developed a comprehensive solution wherein: We have developed technical reusable sanitary napkins that can be reused safely and hygienically upto 24 months. We systematically transform menstrual practices through unique awareness programmes that dispel myths and misconceptions. We create women entrepreneurs to spread awareness and lead sales in their local communities. This package of solutions, assists us to fulfill our organisational objectives of improving the 3 Es i.e. Education of women and girls, Environment safety with reusable sanitary napkins that last a user approximately for two years and all- round Empowerment of women by instilling a sense of self-confidence and independence through our livelihood program . Project Baala’s environment friendly, reusable sanitary pads cost as less as Rs. 190, this coupled with a comprehensive menstrual hygiene awareness program dismantles all supply, demand and accessibility issues related to the menstrual pads. The organization has benefitted over 2,25,000 women and girls in India, Nepal, Ghana and Tanzania. 2 Key Highlights More distributions in 2020 as opposed to the previous financial 20.4% year 68.5% contribution to the growth in distribution in comparison to the 68.5% last 4 years, taking the total reach to 221,541 menstruators. 43 partnerships with organisations to distribute our sanitary napkins 43 and conduct awareness sessions on ground of our distributions were campaign related and 26.28% were 57.1% international and state wise distributions Online Training of Trainer sessions across India and Nepal that 60+ created 700+ menstrual advocates across the country Our efficacy research suggests acceptability of our pads is 78% and 78% 76.5% of them the women wished to buy them Our research to understand the impact of COVID-19 on MHM 31.8% presented deterioration in access to safe menstrual hygiene products by 31.8% 3 Key Programs & Indicators During the last financial year we distributed and sold a total of 90589 [h1] Baala kits with the support of our CSR partners and HNIs. Given the COVID-19, scenario, the implementation for these kits was a result of collaborations with Civil Society Organizations and Governmental Departments across the country. We undertook tri-partite collaborations to reach the menstruators at the bottom of the pyramid. The arrangement involved collaboration between Project Baala as the nodal MHM partner, a financial partner that supported the collaboration and an implementation partner that undertook the on-ground implementation of our solution. This helped us increase our outreach to 2[h2] new regions- Bihar and Jammu & Kashmir [h3] in taking our total outreach in the country to 17 states and one union territory. The indicator for all distributions (sections 3.1 and 3.2) were primarily 3: Acceptability and Usage of Pads Organic demand and Affordability of Pads Change in Knowledge Attitude Practice towards Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) 3.1 CSR distributions - B2B Sales Program 75 Over the last financial year, Project Baala was able to achieve 20.4% more distribution as opposed to the 50 previous financial year. Overall, we contributed 68.5% to the growth in distribution in comparison to the last 4 25 years, taking the total reach to 221,541 beneficiaries. This program was possible with the help of our business to 0 business transactions with our CSR partners. Baala’s 1 0 2 th -2 - 9 0 w solutions i.e. our reusable sanitary napkin kit and 1 2 ro 0 0 G 2 2 r Y Y a F F e Y awareness sessions were disseminated in communities 4 Fig 1: Percentage growth of the organisation where the need for intervention was high. 3.1.a. Campaign related distributions under CSR Partnership Campaign Related Other Small Distributions 57.1% Distributions 16.62% This year, given the restrictions in the community reach. We uniquely leveraged online campaigns to generate awareness about menstrual hygiene in urban communities whilst garnering support for our impact on-ground. We reached 51,400 menstruators with the help of 2 major social media campaigns- Azadi for me and Onefor21. State-Wise Distributions 26.28% These again focused on reaching out to women across the country in the months of August 2020 and February, 2021. Campaigns contributed a high 57.1% of the total Fig 2: B2B finance and sales distribution program distributions. The campaign distributions were undertaken with the support of our CSR Partners. Azadi for Me Azadi for me campaign was designed to generate awareness on the education, health, environmental and financial loss caused due to poor MH practices. We motivated individuals to share our informational posts on their social media profiles and incentivized them by providing one Baala Sanitary Napkin kit to an underprivileged menstruator for every share. The campaign ran for a month an and saw the participation of celebrities like Boman Irani and Mandira Bedi. We were able to distribute 50,000 sanitary Napkins in 16 locations of Mumbai which were Thane, Wadala, Dharavi, Kharghar, TISS, Mulund, Mankhurd, Vashi, Vashi Naka, Kurla, Matunga, Transit Camp, Thakkar Bappa, Lokhande Marg, Jai Ambe Nagar, Shivaji Nagar and Malad. One for '21 The Onefor’21 campaign was designed to celebrate the spirit of collaboration for safe MHM across the country for 2021. We launched an online campaign for registration and collaborated with 7 organisations in Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi-NCR. Our solution as described involves training of master trainers such as the field associates of these organizations. These trainings were undertaken by our trained cadre of 25 young girls from across the country known as Baala Bosses. These master trainers then conducted menstrual Hygiene awareness sessions in their communities along with distribution of Baala kits in their respective communities. Campaign Name Locations Quantity Azaadi for Me Mumbai 50,000 Jammu & Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya One for '21 1,400 Pradesh, Maharashtra and Delhi- NCR 3.1.b. International and state-wise distributions under CSR Partnership 23,280 distributions were done with the support of CSR Partners. This accounts for 26.28% of the total distributions. This implementation for the same was undertaken with help of various national and international grassroots organizations and government agencies. These included Women and Child Development (WCD) department of Delhi Government, Akshay Patra Foundation, Aga Khan Rural Support Program, CG Net Swara, Chaitanya Wise, The Probe, and 8 Schools of Alwar. We also covered a distribution in Kathmandu by Lion’s Club Udaan under CSR partnerships. Just like our engagement in the campaign-related distributions, this also involved training of field associates at grassroots level by Baala Bosses who later conducted awareness sessions with the beneficiaries at their local level. Name of Organization Locations Quantity WCD, Delhi Government Delhi 4400 Akshay Patra Foundation Jaipur, Delhi 4000 Aga Khan Rural Support Bihar 5000 Program CG Net Swara Chattisgarh 3000 Chaitanya Wise Madhya Pradesh 5000 The Probe Delhi 340 8 Alwar Schools, Rajasthan Alwar 1200 Lion’s Club Udaan Kathmandu 340 HIV Alliance Pan India 400 Total 23,280 3.1.c.