{"id":27477,"date":"2021-01-28T20:30:10","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T11:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/jan\/28\/they-use-old-cloths-sri-lanka-to-give-schoolgirls-free-period-products"},"modified":"2021-01-28T20:30:10","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T11:30:10","slug":"they-use-old-cloths-sri-lanka-to-give-schoolgirls-free-period-products-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/?p=27477","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They use old cloths\u2019: Sri Lanka to give schoolgirls free period products"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a country where women often still resort to rags as sanitary towels, campaigners are trying to break down a damaging taboo<\/p>\n<p>In a village school near the beach, Koshala Dilrukshi teaches English to students from Uswetakeiyawa, a Sri Lankan fishing village. On most days, Dilrukshi says, some of the girls in her class will be missing. They go absent when they have their periods.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s not uncommon throughout Sri Lanka. More than half of the adolescents responding to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.unicef.org\/srilanka\/reports\/knowledge-attitudes-practices-behavior-kapb-study-school-wash-program\">Unicef study<\/a> in 2015 did not want or weren\u2019t allowed to go to school during their periods, while 37% miss one or two school days each month. For most, fear of staining, pain and discomfort are the main reasons for not going to school.<\/p>\n<p> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/global-development\/2021\/jan\/28\/they-use-old-cloths-sri-lanka-to-give-schoolgirls-free-period-products\">Continue reading&#8230;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a country where women often still resort to rags as sanitary towels, campaigners are trying to break down a damaging tabooIn a village school near the beach, Koshala Dilrukshi teaches English to students from Uswetakeiyawa, a Sri Lankan fishing vill&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1735,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sns_share_botton_hide":"","vkExUnit_sns_title":"","_vk_print_noindex":"","sitemap_hide":"","_veu_custom_css":"","veu_display_promotion_alert":"","vkexunit_cta_each_option":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[615,59,984,958,79,61,674,281],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27477","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-global-development","category-menstruation","category-poverty","category-society","category-south-and-central-asia","category-sri-lanka","category-women"],"aioseo_notices":[],"veu_head_title_object":{"title":"","add_site_title":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1735"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27477"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27479,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27477\/revisions\/27479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eastasianews.net\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}