Students are partnering with NGOs for various initiatives like Pad distribution drive in Bengaluru, online session on gender inequality and menstrual hygiene management awareness sessions for school-going girls in Chennai

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras students have launched a social campaign called 'UnMute' focused on menstrual hygiene management and self-defence against sexual harassment. Through this initiative, the students aim to help women speak up on these issues and also conduct awareness campaigns.

Being taken up as part of Shaastra 2022, the annual technical festival of IIT Madras, the students have partnered with Non-Governmental Organisations such as Chudar, Go-Hygiene, CRY, Sakhya and Swayam to conduct programs like Pad distribution drive in Bengaluru, online session on Gender Inequality and Impact on people's lives, Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) Awareness sessions for school-going girls in Chennai are being conducted since October 16.

Ratna Kumar Annabattula, Faculty Advisor, Shaastra 2022, IIT Madras, said, "This year the team has put tremendous efforts to execute UnMute, that primarily associates with menstrual hygiene management and self-defence for women. Having collaborated with various NGOs, the students hope to create a long-lasting impact by helping women to pursue a confident life."

Nitish Gupta, Co-curricular affairs secretary, Shaastra 2022, IIT Madras, said, "We believe that a lot of these incidents can be mitigated by informing women about some basic self-defence techniques along with helping them and, even men, understand how to assess a situation so that they can help people, even if they aren't the ones being assaulted. As a part of our event, speakers are contacted by various organizations to talk about why women are even now sexually assaulted, empowering the women to understand the disparities in society, and enabling them to defend themselves by identifying dangerous situations and employing simple techniques"

For MHM Awareness sessions, speakers trained on the subject of Menstrual Hygiene will be invited to speak to girls/women of the target audience NGO in an online/offline mode.

They will speak about the need for menstrual hygiene, how the lack of it can lead to diseases and teach how to maintain good menstrual hygiene. In the end, menstrual pads would be distributed to the women. The students plan to conduct a few sessions as the speakers themselves for self-defence.