Title | PROJECT FREE PERIOD |
Brand | STAYFREE |
Product / Service | SANITARY NAPKINS |
Category | B04. Business Citizenship / Corporate Responsibility & Environmental |
Entrant | DDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA |
Idea Creation | DDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA |
PR | DDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA |
Production | DDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA |
Additional Company | PRERANA ANTI-TRAFFICKING Mumbai, INDIA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Rahul Mathew | DDB Mudra Group | National Creative Director |
Brijesh Jacob | 22Feet Tribal Worldwide Pvt. Ltd. | Chief Creative Technologist |
Shagun Seda | DDB Mudra Group | Executive Creative Director |
Kapil Tammal | DDB Mudra Group | Executive Creative Director |
Sharad Das Gupta | DDB Mudra Group | Senior Art Director & Copywriter |
Aashna Gopalkrishnan | DDB Mudra Group | Copywriter |
Vinay Singh | DDB Mudra Group | Group Head |
Lalit Sakurkar | DDB Mudra Group | Group Head |
Faraaz Ansari | DDB Mudra Group | Art Director |
Aditya Kanthy | DDB Mudra Group | Group Managing Director |
Kim Das | DDB Worldwide | Global Business Director |
Toru Jhaveri | DDB Mudra Group | Senior Strategy Director |
Sanchari Chakrabarty | DDB Mudra Group | Senior Strategist |
Natasha Bohra | DDB Mudra Group | Strategist |
Anushka Gilani | DDB Mudra Group | Strategist |
Rajiv Sabnis | DDB Mudra Group | Executive Director |
Nikita Tambay | DDB Mudra Group | Associate Vice President - Brand Experience & Engagement |
Vinisha P | DDB Mudra Group | Associate Vice President - Brand Engagement |
Megha Jaiswal | DDB Mudra Group | Manager - Brand Solutions |
Megha Sharma | DDB Mudra Group | Manager Brand Solutions |
Sayali Kolge | DDB Mudra Group | Manager Brand Solutions |
Qaid Vora | DDB Mudra Group | Executive Brand Solutions |
Vishal Sane | DDB Mudra Group | Films Head |
Chandana Bannikoppa | DDB Mudra Group | Films |
Ganesh Pawal | DDB Mudra Group | Films |
Himmat Singh Shekhawat | Shekhawat Filmography | DOP |
Akanksha Mishra | DDB Mudra Group | Manager - Corporate Communications & PR |
DarshaniJawale | DDB Mudra Group | Executive - Corporate Communication & PR |
Kashif Memon | Mothership Productions | Production |
Paromita Balodi | Mothership Productions | Editor |
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. Project Free Period takes the most natural and biological occurrence in a woman's life... her periods and changes it into the most basic of human rights... self respect.
The curriculum is made up of 8 skills that run 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 introduce the world to our students and to introduce our students to a new source of income, we run exhibitions of our products at various locations and also through our partnership with India's largest retail chain, Big Bazaar. With the support of Ujjivan, India's largest micro-finance company, we also run financial literacy classes for our students. With colleges offering to manage the project, banks offering to run financial management classes, and more brands extending their support, Project Free Period is now India's largest volunteering program built through a public-private partnership.
Over 210 days of training. Zero dropouts with every student finishing at least one skill. About 15000 days of periods turned into 15000 days of learning. Volunteers enrolled through online campaign - 67384 from across 17 states. Retail Partnership with Big Bazaar. Financial partnership with Ujjivan. Potential income generated (as per value attached to services and profits from exhibitions) - over 4.5 million indian rupees. 40% increase in Brand Equity Total reach - 1.7 billion
The category of sanitary protection has only shown periods as an obstacle to be overcome. While combining two topics hitherto shrouded in silence, menstruation & prostitution, Project Free Period shifts the narrative from taboo to empowerment. Its strength lies in the fact that it engages the might of the community to keep the initiative going. Be it the volunteering drives, allows people to participate in not just the conversation, but in the initiative as well. Or the impact it has created on the corporate world for them to lend their support.
As a brand, Stayfree stands for normalising periods in the lives of women. Here, we saw an opportunity to use periods to normalise the lives of commercial sex workers. Through studies of market economics, we narrowed down skills that could generate sustainable incomes for these women in the future. We worked with professional trainers and NGO Prerana to compress these skills into 3-day modules that were easy to learn. The curriculum also allowed them to advance their skill with every module. To be able to scale up the positive response from our early workshops, we ran a nationwide recruitment drive for volunteer trainers. Through Unicef backing, volunteering for ProjectFreePeriod is now part of the social curriculum of leading colleges. This earned a lot of media for the initiative and a lot of love for the brand. This also helped us refresh our curriculum with new skills, thereby attracting new students.