“The Red Code is a social enterprise that I co-founded that tries to find sustainable and affordable solutions to female health, particularly menstrual health and management. We started with menstruation but now we are trying to diversify and cater to more issues related to female health and hygiene. Our major product is the reusable sanitary cloth pad and alongside retailing the
product, we conduct various drives where we give these pads out to women who cannot afford them or who are using other alternatives that are unhygienic and unsafe, like cloth or rags to manage their menstruation. We have conducted several sessions to spread awareness. We conducted one at Habib University in collaboration with the SerVe Club and also another one in Chitral and Balochistan. We are trying to give back to the community as much as we can – that is our main goal.
The idea was basically my sister’s and cousin’s. We used to have a house-help who was from a village in Pindi Bhattian. We asked her what she used in the village to manage her menstruation. She said that she started using pads when she arrived in the city. My sister and cousin became very concerned when they heard that. They started digging deeper and the house-help told them that in the village, there is no concept of using undergarments – the women use makeshift cloth and only wear it on the days when they are menstruating.
My sister and cousin then decided to start writing to different organizations that were involved with menstrual health projects. A lot of the organizations did not get back to them. They thought that the product would not do well as the idea was unsustainable. But my sister and cousin were determined and they looked up various models on how they could improve the status quo. Cloth pads were popular in India and Africa so they decided to learn how to use resources to produce these pads. They bought a few flannels from a vendor and started making whatever they could on their own. My khala (aunt) stitched the first prototype.
At the time, there was a UNICEF competition being initiated known as Generation Unlimited. They decided on a menstrual topic for Pakistan and encouraged anyone with a solution to send in their applications. My sister and cousin applied and after a few months, they got the acceptance call; they were accepted for the boot camp which was to be held in Islamabad. However, they needed three members so, I went to the boot camp with them. There were 1500 applicants and only 10 groups were selected. Amongst them, only five would win the 1000 Dollar-grant and we were one of those five teams. We came back to Karachi and decided to work on our target neighborhood. The organization we were initially supposed to work with pulled out of the project; however, we got connected to an NGO called Hunar Ghar. We told them that we needed to make these pads and interviewed women from the NGO and started our own research. We conducted focus groups and interviews where we asked the women what they use to manage their menstruation and whether they would be willing to use cloth pads. They informed us that they were already using cloth pads so, we decided to provide them with a better hygienic cloth with a proper structure.
We then decided to take a user-centered approach by putting the comfort of the women at the heart of our design and made a few prototypes that we gave to the women. We documented the journey and sent the research and results to UNICEF and they replied in 3-4 months. During that time, we asked the women for feedback. They gave us some criticism and told us that the pads didn’t hold up too well and that the buttons on the pads could catch rust but they were still interested in trying a new prototype. UNICEF got back to us, made us fill out several documents and we were one of the five global teams to win on 12th April, 2019.1 The final grant was 20,000 US Dollars which was used to scale up the entire project. UNICEF saw the potential in our project and they wanted to invest in it.
Once we got the grant, we made different prototypes. We made six prototypes and each had some shortcomings but we kept working on the fabric and the structure. Then, we started retailing them commercially to the urban population because there was an increased interest in eco-friendly products. So, the product was not only for women from low-income households but also for urban women. When we started retailing the pads, we realized this product was in a niche market but it had the potential for growth. People really liked the product and we started to gain recurring customers. Now, we have a model which we retail and we also allow people to sponsor other individuals. So, if someone buys a pad, they can sponsor other girls as well who may not have access to the product. During our session at Habib too, a lot of people expressed their interest in sponsoring pads for other women.
My family was initially a little hesitant but now they have become desensitized to it. For example, if we have a vendor picking up the product from our house and I’m not home to do that, I can call my father and ask him to pick up the packages and do it for me. He is very comfortable with it now. Over time they have witnessed the growth in the idea and also the growth that we have experienced as individuals. My friends have also been very supportive. The women in our target neighborhood as well were surprisingly open to the idea and comfortable. We had the preconceived notion that it may be too much of a taboo but that wasn’t the case.
The challenge that we face right now is that when we speak to our customers, who are mostly from the middle or higher class, they have questions about how the product works and are concerned about washing the cloth and whether it is hygienic to reuse it. We have to talk to them and explain to them the process, cater to their questions, and some women come around but not always. For example, recently Womanistan shared our project and a lot of the women in the comments were hesitant about using the product. But I think it has a lot to do with people's relationship with their own bodies rather than the stigma around menstrual health.
One massive challenge that we faced was in the pandemic – during the heavy rainfall. Since we don’t have an office space, we do most of our operations from my house. We stored our packages in the basement and during the rain, all of the packages drowned. It was a massive challenge because we were still starting out, had barely established anything, and were already at a loss.
There were so many unprecedented hiccups that came along the way and I wanted to give up at that moment. It was overwhelming. But there are instances when you need to come together as a team and you need to have great dynamics and communication. You need to trust the other person's skills and not take on the burden alone. I think that these are important things to understand. And sometimes you have everything planned but sometimes you also have to do a lot of quick thinking and use the resources available to you. You shouldn’t wait for the product to be perfect because the process is evolutionary; there is always room for improvements. You just need to go with it, have faith in your product and the team, and learn from the process. I used to think that we needed to start the project when the product was perfect but I realized that there is no such thing as a perfect product – you just keep working on it and get through whatever difficulty you face.”
– Sana Farooq Khan,
Social Development and Policy,
Batch of 2021
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