In India, periods in itself is considered dirty and impure. On top of that, countless century old superstitions make women stay silent about it. By doing that, a woman is only inviting unrequired trouble for herself in the form of vaginal infections and other health problems.

We found that the darkest one out of all these superstitions scared women the most. It said that, if any living being touched a used sanitary pad, the woman who wore it would become infertile.

Baanjh, or becoming infertile is one of the biggest curse that’s faced by Indian women. Hence, they silently keep practicing their century old unhygienic habits without questioning it.

Since there has been a lot of silence around periods, Indian women have been blindly following superstitions and unhygienic practices like the usage of rags, sand, and ash. To break the silence on these superstitions and unhygienic practices, we launched the campaign Whispers Break Silence. The insight was simple and connected with millions of Indian women.

The best way to empower someone is through education. Hence, we used our biggest asset, our educational program under the banner of Whispers Break Silence and spoke to girls before they got their first periods.

We launched our campaign with a film, (#whispersbreaksilence) in the month of February that resonated with the sentiments of millions of Indian women. It was up on YouTube and all of Whisper India’s social media handles. We also played our film in theaters to connect with the remainder of the Indian masses.

It all built up to us going on ground to schools and implementing our strategy of teaching millions of girls the right sanitary hygiene. These lessons were taught by teachers who were mothers, who stood as proof that even if one wears a pad, they do not go infertile.

• 35 million girls impacted through our educational program in 40,000 schools across India.

• Estimating to impact another 11 million school girls in the next two years

• Total number of views on social media ‘2.9 Million’.

Through research, we observed that superstitions start cultivating in the head of a girl only after she gets her first period. Thus, we felt that the best time to teach her about period superstitions was before she got her periods. Only so that she knows what she’s getting into.

With our existing health and hygiene program, we targeted millions of young girls in schools before they could fall prey to superstitions and unhygienic practices by teaching them right sanitary hygiene.

For the past 20 years in a country where nobody has spoken about periods openly, P&G Whisper has been championing the confidence of girls by encouraging them to open up about it and use the right menstrual hygiene methods. Yet, after all these efforts through the years, the sanitary pad adoption rate remains at a staggering low of 20%!

We found out that instead of using sanitary pads, a majority of women are still resorting to the use of archaic and hazardous methods like rags, sand, ash etc. It was the need of the hour to take into account the happenings taking place in our country and do something about it.

For a brand with the highest market share in the health and hygiene sector, our primary objective this time around was to get women to follow the right menstrual hygiene methods.