Hindware is India’s leading brand for bathroom solutions, recognised for quality, expertise and its innovative approach to products. It has always been our vision to empower people with our expertise, through thoughtful product designs based on consumer needs. This belief manifests itself in our corporate social responsibility initiatives as well.
A few years back, an NGO named Dasra conducted exemplary groundwork across schools in Indian villages. What they discovered was shocking; 23 million girls drop out of school every year due to a lack of clean toilets. According to a citizen-led survey published in January 2019, 11.5% of India’s rural schools have no separate toilets for girls, and of the ones that did 11.7% were locked and unusable.
The absence of toilets in schools especially affects girls when they hit puberty as they stay back at home for five days every month, missing school work. Eventually, unable to keep up with the classwork they choose to drop out completely.
And that’s how the idea #hygienethatempowers was born.
Hindware started the initiative to ‘BUILD A TOILET, BUILD HER FUTURE’ on World Toilet Day in 2020 by building toilets across schools in 8 villages in Bahadurgarh, Haryana. This year, we have decided to carry forward the same initiative since schools are all set to re-open across the country. While most children are excited to go back to school, a lot of girls will end up missing school once again due to the lack of a toilet.
To bring our vision to life, we’ve collaborated with the MA.My Anchor Foundation – a non-profit organization that relentlessly strives to bring about a socio-economic development through a responsible consumption of resources. Together we have worked on the process of identification of schools and implementing the idea in Bahadurgarh. From working with local authorities to getting the activation started, to educating the school going girls and their families about the importance of our initiative, MA.My has been at the forefront of making sure our idea comes to life.
Since its inception in 2003 the organization has focused on initiatives around Rural and Urban Sanitation, Education and Capacity Building, Responsible Consumption of Resources among other areas of focus. We’re proud to associate with them and look forward to working together to identify as many schools as possible where we can implement our campaign.