Suhani Jalota, Founder & CEO of the Mumbai based women's health & employment organization Myna Mahila Foundation has been nominated for the prestigious Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award 2020 as the only Indian Finalist in the top 3!
David Beckham, Akshay Kumar, Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle along with the Queen's Commonwealth Trust, The Royal Family, Industrialists Anand Mahindra, Harsh Goenka, Actor Suniel Shetty, Sharman Joshi, Rohit Bose Roy, ex Cricketer Rahul Sanghavi and others are all supporting the nomination as the only Indian organization to be chosen at this level for the Global Citizen prize. The event will be hosted by John Legend at one of the largest concerts in the world in December.
The prestigious award honors an individual aged 18-30 who has contributed meaningfully towards the goal of ending extreme poverty. Founder & CEO of Myna Mahila Foundation, Suhani has previously represented India on a global scale when she was presented with the Queen’s Young Leaders award by Queen Elizabeth II for her outstanding contribution to social issues related to women’s health.
In 2016, Suhani’s fellow Duke alumni and American philanthropist Melinda Gates also appreciated her work in empowering women and fighting poverty in India. “The Global Citizen prize would help us directly reach 250,000 girls, which is more important than ever during and after this pandemic. We need more scaled up programs helping millions of girls, which Myna Launchpad, our program for scale, is really equipped to do”-Suhani. Myna Mahila Foundation, backed by Meghan Markle, is a globally recognized women’s health and employment organization that operates on three pillars: improve menstrual health, generate employment for women, and build trusted networks for women.
Their ongoing campaign, “Pledge a Period” was launched in July this year to provide underprivileged girls with access to sanitary & menstrual health essentials amidst a countrywide lockdown due to COVID. It has garnered support from various Bollywood actors including Tabu, Shilpa Shetty, R. Madhavan, Rohit Bose Roy; ace badminton player Saina Nehwal; entrepreneur Poorna Patel and numerous other influencers. Upon winning The Global Citizen Prize: CISCO Youth Leadership Award, Myna Mahila Foundation would receive a $250,000 cash prize that will significantly accelerate their mission of ending period inequality and supporting 2 million girls & women across India by 2025.
Speaking to Asian Voice, Suhani Jalota said that the mission of the organisation is to bring conversations of women’s menstrual and sexual health to the doorstep around these taboo topics. She said, “The Global Citizen Prize is a platform which really helps us amplify our voice to leverage a lot of amazing networks as well as funding for scaling up.”
“The only way to scalability is to compliment our physical structures and create a platform that women can use to track their own health and progress,” she added. In a new project called Myna Launchpad, which has taken Jalota to the Global Citizen Forum this year, has an ABCD model of access, where A stands for : the mobile application that Myna has launched, called the Myna Mahila Health Tracker which will enable women to know information about their menstrual cycles, enter information and track their periods. It has information to buy sanitary napkins and talk to a health provider to watch videos around topics related to women’s health. The A also stands for ATM, which is a pad and face mask vending machine. They can procure them by using QR codes and if they do not have smartphones, a public toilet caretaker can help them in accessing the same. “This way they will have direct access to pads and napkins without the involvement of a male shopkeeper,” Jalota said. The B stands for Bus which will essentially connect the centres and C stands for Chemist shop that’ll have all the brand products. D stands for Door Step delivery of products and information which the organisation is pitching to the Global Citizen platform this year in a comprehensive manner.
Myna Mahila Foundation is a globally recognized women’s health and employment organization founded by young entrepreneur Suhani Jalota, and a group of slum community leaders based in Mumbai's slums. They operate on three pillars which are, they employ women, improve menstrual health and build trusted networks for women. They organize a variety of activities under each pillar with the goal of developing women leaders who are financially stable, confident and have more agency in the household and community to make decisions. Since 2015, they have directly impacted over 5,00,000 women at their doorstep in some of the most vulnerable slum communities and schools in Mumbai and aim to reach 21 Lakh women by 2025.
