Suhani Jalota
Suhani Jalota, founder of the Myna Mahila Foundation, which works towards providing menstrual health products to women in Mumbai’s slums and creates livelihood opportunities for them, has been nominated for the Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award. Twenty-six-year-old Jalota, pursuing her PhD in Health Policy and Economics at Stanford University in California, is the only Indian among the three finalists for the Global Citizen Prize: Cisco Youth Leadership Award 2020, that celebrates young activists working towards ending extreme poverty, and awards USD 2,50,000 to support the winner’s organisation.
The winner will be determined through a voting process that is currently underway.
Jalota started the Myna Mahila Foundation in 2015 and worked towards encouraging women in Mumbai’s slums “to speak about the issues they are most afraid to discuss aloud.” Her foundation has distributed sanitary pads to women across slums and held a menstrual hygiene survey on 1,100 girls in Natwar Parekh Compound in Govandi in 2015. In 2017, Meghan Markle visited the NGO and became an advocate to break down the taboo surrounding menstruation in India. The foundation aims at providing menstrual health products and services to 2 million women by 2025.
Jalota’s fellow nominees for the award include Christelle Kwizera, Founder and Managing Director, Water Access Rwanda, who works towards solving the water crisis in Rwanda and creating employment for young people. The other nominee is Ryan Gersava, founder president of Virtualahan, set up in 2015 with the mission to break down employment barriers for people with disabilities and other disadvantaged groups in Philippines.
Read more:: Founder of Mumbai-based NGO among three nominated for Global Citizen Prize
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