Learn with Us
Educational Offerings
Do you want to become a menstrual educator and need to learn the basics or are you already a menstrual health educator wishing to further develop your skills?
Are you interested in setting up a cloth pad manufacturing unit?
Are you interested in deeply exploring the wonderful world of menstruation and sustainable practices for personal and cultural transformation?
Eco Femme conducts research and provides consultancy services, workshops and training to individuals, NGOs and organisations working in the field of menstrual health. As well as sharing our experience, insights and expertise in cloth pad production, social enterprise business models, advocacy and menstrual health education, we also engage in broader dialogues around women’s empowerment, environmental sustainability and women in leadership.
We have created and curated a wide range of learning resources, opportunities and sustainable menstrual health teaching tools, available in various formats (and languages) to help you develop the capacity to become an effective and impactful agent for change across a wide range of settings!
Useful Resources
Browse our specially curated list of key resources that we believe anyone working in this space should know about!
Eco Femme learning opportunities
Training of Trainers
Holistic menstrual health education – when done well – can be transformational! We provide comprehensive training – either remotely or face to face – in how to deliver an effective and empowering menstrual health educational session.
We have a facilitator’s guide and accompanying facilitators kit which includes all the information and resources you will need to provide menstrual health education to adolescent girls who are learning about menstruation for the first time. A guide for education with other populations is under development
What topics are covered?
- Female Anatomy, Menstruation, and the Menstrual Cycle — Including instruction in menstrual cycle tracking providing a powerful tool for cultivating body literacy.
- Taking Care of Ourselves During Menstruation — Hygiene, nutrition, exercise and natural remedies
- Menstrual Products — Learn about different menstrual absorbents and the proper use and care for products to ensure safety, good health and sanitation. Product analysis offers a possibility to make informed product choices.
- Safe space for practice speaking — Learn how to have conversations about menstruation and explore cultural practices, free of judgement
One-off sessions for groups
We welcome the chance to interact with audiences on menstruation related themes and we can customise presentations to address the needs of specific audiences.
Some of the topics we can cover include:
- What is sustainable menstruation and why does it matter including exploring what menstrual product options are out there and their pro’s and con’s
- Facilitate workshops on how to hand stitch a cloth pad
- Menstrual health education – how to conduct awareness sessions with tailored to the needs of different groups that is sensitive to ecological concerns and can facilitate cultural shift
- How to gain more confidence to speak about menstruation.
- Women’s leadership and Eco Femme as a model Social Enterprise.
Training in production
From time to time we train other organisations in how to stitch cloth washable pads to provide a local livelihood for rural women. We have created a knowledge production kit and a 3-day training module for this purpose.
We do this with discernment as we have observed that unless there is strong market development and economical investment for some time, cloth pad making ends up being a loss-making undertaking.
There are a number of reasons for this:
- Firstly, cloth pads are not a cheap product to manufacture – the raw material costs, stitching charges and overheads associated with pad production make a cost price below Rs 100 challenging to achieve.
- The next problem then becomes selling the pad due to the stiff competition with disposable pads which are seen as more cost-effective and convenient than cloth pads.
Before getting into production, it is highly recommended that market research including probes around willingness to pay for cloth pads be undertaken to ensure a good understanding of the market dynamics for selling cloth pads. This support can be provided under our pads for sisters initiative.
Residential workshops
We routinely host a deep dive 3 day residential workshop in Auroville suitable for ambassadors and menstrual health educators. It is highly experiential, supports peer based learning and helps foster a community of menstrual education practitioners and activists who seek collective transformation in the way we relate to menstruation in culture.
Online learning
Eco Femme has created a number of presentations, videos and digital learning resources to help you deepen your understanding and pass on knowledge to others.
- A useful toolkit (powerpoint) to help ambassadors and educators learn about themes such as:
- Situational analysis of menstruation in India
- Understanding the process of menstruation and cycle tracking
- What are cloth pads and why sustainable menstruation matters
- Analysing the health, environmental and cultural dimensions of various product options
- Creating a period positive culture
- Sanitary waste: Masika (video documentary) dirty secrets (document)
- Why make the switch to cloth pads: posters in different languages
- Menstrual Education in rural Communities: 4 part video series was created to support menstrual health educators in building the knowledge, skills and confidence to deliver effective menstrual educational sessions to women and girls in areas where learning is not accessed online | Watch in English
- Menstrual Health Education in the Classroom: 4 part series of instructional videos created to help menstrual educators gain the confidence and knowledge to convey key concepts. | Watch in English
- Menstrual Conversation starters: 28 conversation women – 28 conversations men and boys
- Yoga for menstruation
- Menstrual cycle tracking sheet
- PCOS fact sheet
- Medicinal plants to treat menstruation
- How to conduct product analysis: Short explanatory introduction – Detailed session
for more information about any of our offerings