Across Kolkata’s densely populated informal settlements, families live in crowded settlements with limited access to clean water, sanitation, secure work, and essential services.
For girls and young women, menstruation can add another layer of hardship. Periods are often surrounded by silence and stigma, leaving many to manage them without clear guidance or affordable products. Some rely on unsafe materials, while inadequate sanitation can make attending school or participating in daily life difficult.
When a family is already deciding how to meet its most basic needs, sanitary pads may be treated as an expense they cannot afford. Girls miss lessons, women lose days of work, and health concerns go unspoken.
Kolkata’s Landing Pad responds with locally produced sanitary pads, practical health education, and open conversations that help replace shame with knowledge, confidence, and dignity.
The Landing Pad initiative helps women and girls manage menstruation with greater knowledge, confidence, and dignity.
Run by the Kolkata Mary Ward Social Centre, the program combines menstrual health education with free access to sanitary pads. Awareness sessions create spaces where women, girls, boys, and men can ask questions, challenge misinformation, and begin speaking more openly about menstruation.
The program’s name reflects its purpose: creating a safe, practical place where women and girls can continue learning, working, caring for their families, and participating in community life without menstruation holding them back.
In 2025, free sanitary pad dispensing machines, known locally as ATMs, were installed in three communities. These machines make pads readily available while helping normalise menstrual products as an ordinary and essential part of health.
Awareness sessions explain menstruation, hygiene, product use, disposal, and the importance of seeking healthcare when needed. Women and girls gain practical information about their bodies, while open discussion helps replace fear and misinformation with knowledge.
The program provides free sanitary pads to women and girls in marginalised communities. Pad ATMs provide a reliable local supply, reducing the financial and practical barriers to accessing menstrual products.
Community leaders are trained to deliver awareness sessions and continue conversations beyond the initial program activities. This locally led approach strengthens trust, builds community knowledge, and helps ensure support remains available over time.
Menstrual stigma cannot be addressed by speaking only with women and girls. Through initiatives such as the ‘Let’s Talk Periods’ workshops, boys and men are invited into the conversation. Participants learn that menstruation is a normal biological process and consider how their attitudes and actions can either reinforce shame or support dignity.
Follow-up visits give participants opportunities to ask questions, reinforce healthy practices, and provide feedback about access to pads and the operation of the machines. This continued engagement helps the program respond to local needs rather than relying on one-off distribution.
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