Unlike most women, commercial sex workers actually look forward to their periods. Because it’s the only time they cannot be forced to work.

Introducing Project Free Period.

An initiative that turned their 3 days of periods, or 3 days of no work, into 3 days of learning.

We partnered with professional trainers and Prerana, an anti-trafficking NGO, to create a unique curriculum.

It comprises of skills that can create economic sustenance, and are compressed into 3-day modules. So that they can use their period days to skill themselves in another trade.

After 6 months of intensive planning, in January 2018, we held our first workshop for women in Kamathipura, Asia’s 2nd largest red-light area.

Our curriculum was made up of 8 skills – candle making, henna design, envelope making, soft-toy making, embroidery, sandwich making and a basic beautician course. We ran these around the month, every month.

To help scale up our ability to train, on International Women’s Day, we put out a social media campaign to recruit volunteer trainers. We also got popular influencers like Olympic medalist, P.V. Sindhu and Instagram celebrity Priya Malik to talk about the initiative.

To build more awareness about Project Free Period, and also introduce our students to a new source of income, we held an exhibition of products made by our students at a prominent mall in Mumbai.

We shall soon be collaborating with other brands to create more training and recruitment options.

Unlike previous initiatives for these women, Project Free Period has seen no dropouts, with every student finishing at least one skill module.

We've conducted 120 days of training, with 8 economically viable vocational skills broken up into 40, three-day modules.

3060 days of periods have been converted into 3060 days of learning for these women.

The potential income generated, through products made and services taught during the workshops, amount to a whopping USD 30,500 (over 2 million Indian rupees).

We've built a trainer database of 742 volunteer trainers with varied skills.

The initiative has been covered by leading publications and supported by many celebrities and influencers.

Total reach - 20 million.