Our brief was ambitious and multi-faceted, to accelerate brand growth in a category where period conversations itself were taboo. We needed to shine a spotlight on conversations around women’s issues and menstruation, creating tangible change in the process.

The idea challenged every convention around how brand communication should be done and how awareness should be built. Putting a marginalized group of women at the heart of our communication was a test of our brand purpose and resolve but also the provocation needed to spark period conversations. Most importantly, our creative strategy broke the barriers of one taboo with another

India is unique in the depth and persistence of stigmas around menstruation. Across classes and subcultures, periods are believed to be ‘impure.’ These biases are generational – even today, 70% of mothers think that periods are ‘dirty.’ By association, they think that their own daughters are ‘dirty’ when they are menstruating (Dasra Report, 2014).

In this context, it is no surprise that women in the sex trade were doubly marginalized and stigmatized by society, forced to operate at society’s peripheries, with little or no support in terms of healthcare, employment, or housing.

Tricked or trafficked into sex work at a young age, they had not had a chance to develop any other skills. The fear of returning to poverty, kept them rooted to their current realities. So much so that even when rescued, 77% returned to sex work. (Veshya Anyay Mukti Parishad (VAMP), Rights4Change based in Netherlands)

Stayfree exists in the business of menstrual health but has a much larger purpose. Stayfree sees sanitary napkins as enablers, giving girls and women the physical and psychological reassurance to go further and grow meaningfully. This belief system shapes how products are designed, people are recruited, processes are deployed and partnerships are built.

After pioneering the establishment of the menstrual health business in India, encountering cultural resistance every step of the way, Stayfree had to reckon with category penetration that was still at an abysmal 16%, amongst the lowest rates in the world (UNICEF reports, 2012; Wateraid, 2018).

Stayfree would need to evolve its approach to brand-building, shedding category conventions to accelerate growth. If we really wanted to change the tide, we would have to change the way we looked at periods. Stayfree decided to pressure test its purpose, focusing on reclaiming every woman's agency while reframing the period narrative.

Forced into sex work at a young age, women in the sex trade had not learnt other employable skills. Many of them might have wanted to pursue other alternatives or might have wanted their children to have broader horizons but were unaware of the road to follow to get there.

But we unearthed an unlikely opportunity. Much to our surprise, we learned that unlike most women who proclaimed periods to be problematic & difficult, women in the sex trade welcome periods because for them period days are days when they cannot be forced to work.

We saw an opportunity to spark change through a cultural contradiction. Deploy culturally opposing taboos of periods and prostitution into a solution that could take on both issues - help women in the sex trade reclaim their agency & also reframe periods from an obstacle to an opportunity.

Project Free Period - a social initiative that empowered women in the sex trade by turning their period days into days of learning.

We partnered with leading Mumbai-based anti-trafficking NGOs (Prerana and Aastha Parivaar) to craft and deliver a unique curriculum compressed into 3-day modules. We held our first workshop for women in Kamathipura, Asia’s 2nd largest red-light area. Our curriculum was made up of 8 vocational courses, which we ran around the month, every month. To help scale up our ability to train, we put out a social media campaign to recruit volunteer trainers.

As the project started gaining momentum, we realized that we needed to make the classes even more accessible to women across the country, who had little control over their movement and schedules. And hence, in-person training modules were converted into video tutorials and paired with raw material toolkits, distributed via partner NGOs.

Past initiatives for women in the sex trade were well-intentioned but were ultimately futile as they never took their lived realities into account. But, Project Free Period was co-created with women in the sex trade and so these classes have seen no dropouts, with every student finishing at least one skill module.

We've converted over 100,000 days of periods into days of learning for our 11,200+ students. The potential income generated, through products made and services taught during the workshops, amount to a whopping INR 4.5 million.

We've built a trainer database of 67,384 volunteer trainers with varied skills. The initiative has been covered by leading publications and supported by many celebrities and influencers. Total reach – 2.2 billion.

Project Free Period built awareness, currency and equity among our digitally savvy, premium audience who were watching our story unfold online, translating into improved equity scores and soaring sales.