Students of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras have launched a social campaign called ‘UnMute’ focused on menstrual hygiene management, gender inequality, and self-defence against sexual harassment. Through this initiative, the students aim to help women speak up on these issues and also conduct awareness campaigns.
Being taken up as part of Shaastra 2022, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras, the students have partnered with NGOs such as Chudar, Go-Hygiene, CRY, Sakhya, and Swayam to conduct programmes like pad distribution drive in Bengaluru, online sessions on gender inequality, and impact on people’s lives, Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) awareness sessions for school-going girls in Chennai from October 16.
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“Every year, the Shaastra team attempts to identify a social issue and undertake initiatives to tackle it. This year under Shaastra 2022, the students have taken up ‘UnMute’ campaign. The ‘UnMute’ Campaign was launched virtually on October 24 in the presence of Actor Ahsaas Channa,” said IIT Madras.
This year two events will be conducted. The MHM awareness sessions wherein speakers will talk about menstrual hygiene in an online/offline mode. They will speak about the need for menstrual hygiene, how the lack of it can lead to diseases, and teach how to maintain good menstrual hygiene. In the end, menstrual pads would be distributed to the women.
Another event is the self-defence programme to address why women are sexually assaulted even now, empowering women and enabling them to defend themselves by identifying dangerous situations and employing simple techniques. The students plan to conduct a few sessions as the speakers themselves.
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Speaking about this initiative, Nitish Gupta, Co-curricular affairs secretary, Shaastra 2022, IIT Madras, said, “We believe that a lot of these incidents can be mitigated by informing women about some basic self-defence techniques along with helping them and, even men, understand how to assess a situation so that they can help people, even if they aren’t the ones being assaulted. As a part of our event, speakers are contacted by various organizations to talk about why women are even now sexually assaulted, empowering the women to understand the disparities in society, and enabling them to defend themselves by identifying dangerous situations and employing simple techniques.”
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