This charity is helping students' grades with safe, sanitary washrooms
With limited to no access to safe, clean, or private washroom facilities, students who get their periods in India are likely to miss up to five days of school every month — resulting in around 60 days of missed classes per year. As a result, these students suffer from poor academic performance, according to World Vision Canada’s 2021 Annual Report.
Students who go to school while on their periods and have to use unclean washrooms face a greater risk of harassment, infection, and disease. Because of this, 23 million people who get their period drop out of school every year in India alone.
With first-hand insight into the plight of girls in India after adopting his daughter Tia, Nav Bhatia — a celebrity basketball superfan — partnered with World Vision Canada to participate in their Rise Up Daughters of India initiative.
“This was a program that moved me very much,” says Bhatia. “Education is a right for every [person] and more important than we realize.”
In 2021 alone, the Rise Up Daughters of India initiative directly benefited 2,168 girls, and constructed 129 toilets, 12 incinerators, and 25 hand washing stations in 14 schools, with 1,935 boys benefiting from these new facilities as well, according to World Vision Canada’s annual report. Furthermore, 403 girls benefitted from hygiene kits and training on personal hygiene, ensuring girls can get an education without worrying about managing their periods.
These programs help girls like Tania, who had to take a week off school whenever she would get her period. Through the Rise Up Daughters of India project, her school was given an information session about the importance of hygiene, along with a newly installed toilet. Now, Tania can attend school full-time and work towards her goal of becoming a doctor.
World Vision also has a water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) program. This brings safe drinking water to communities, schools, and health facilities. During emergencies, this program also improves sanitation and hygiene practices for those impacted.
“Building washrooms for girls, and providing that safety, can often be the difference between staying in school and being pulled out,” says Bhatia.
It’s not just people who get their periods who are benefiting from these programs. World Vision Canada estimates that over 250,000 people have received hygiene kits and supplies through initiatives like these ones.
Some of World Vision Canada’s other initiatives include The Raw Hope project, which provides life-saving interventions and crisis recovery programs. Their Community-based Management of Acute Malnutrition program provides aid during critical events where food supplies are disrupted. Partnering with the United Nations World Food Programme, World Vision has been able to deliver food assistance to people most in need.
Bhatia has seen first-hand the work World Vision Canada is doing and witnessed how small donations have contributed to larger positive change.
“Whenever you are partnering with an organization, people say that they are wasting money on this or that. But [World Vision], they do what they say,” says Bhatia.
“For humanity to be successful, these young girls need to be educated. Poverty is the biggest disease. Poverty breeds poverty. But now these girls will be graduating, have a better chance at getting jobs, and it will bring them to do better than they have been doing. My daughter, my wife, together, we are believers.”
Visit World Vision’s website to learn more about their work and see how far a small donation can go.
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