Ahmedabad girl raises funds for free eco-friendly sanitary pads

AHMEDABAD: To end ‘period poverty’ and make safe sanitation accessible to women in rural areas, Vruti Patel, an entrepreneur from Ahmedabad, has taken to raising funds online for making eco-friendly sanitary napkins available to menstruating women from underprivileged background.
The 24-year-old quit her job as a corporate lawyer in Mumbai and moved back to her hometown. She undertook the initiative, ‘Ecoflo’, which aims to spread awareness about safe and hygienic menstruation practices among school girls in rural areas along with providing rural women with free access to eco-friendly sanitary napkins.
As part of Ecoflo, Vruti aims at collecting funds to the tune of Rs 1 lakh, of which some Rs 78,210 have already been raised through contribution from 44 donors.
“With the funds raised through crowdfunding, I hope to support the countrywide movement to end Period Poverty, and encourage people to shift towards more environment-friendly alternatives,” said Vruti.
The funds are raised through an online crowdfunding platform, ImpactGuru. Interestingly, the platform has waived off its platform fee entirely, so that fundraisers can receive maximum funds for the causes they support. Having partnered with Aakar Innovations, which is India’s first government-certified producer of economical and fully compostable sanitary napkins, Ecoflo is all set to launch its first sanitary napkin distribution drive in Ahmedabad after this Dussehra.
“Through this drive, we aim to create awareness of and accessibility to clean, simple and economical sanitary products. The eco-friendly sanitary napkins which we provide, are supposed to be disposed in a pit, and will turn into compost within 90-180 days, depending on varying environmental factors,” Vruti further added.