Summary of Position Paper – Ritu Sustainability Study
Using financial support of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (EKN) and technical assistance from SIMAVI; BNPS, TNO, DORP and Red Orange implemented Ritu program in 160 secondary and primary schools covering 50,000 students in 8 upazila of Netrakona district from 2015 to 2020. The program aimed at improving menstrual health of girls between 10 to 15 years old in Bangladesh, particularly improving their knowledge about menstruation, its management; ensuring availability of girls’ friendly toilet at the schools and improving commitment of the government and non-government office bearers to contribute on to taming menstrual health management.
Ritu program followed evidence based, impactful and participatory approach to learn from the intervention. To assess immediate impact of the program, RCT based research was conducted to compare confidence, knowledge, attitude and practices of randomly selected 12,000 girls from intervention and control schools and collected information from them over the period of two years. The finding shows that knowledge and practices were improved on menstrual health management among the 67% of the girls in intervention group which was 43% among the girls of control group. The indirect positive results of the intervention were reduction of absenteeism of girls from the schools during menstruation that improved their learning quality and contributed to reducing drop out. 
During the extended period of the project, SIMAVI invited a teacher from University of Dhaka to conduct a study on sustainability of the results of the intervention. The study was funded by SHARE NET. The researcher conducted interview, focus group discussion of 230 girls and boys, teachers, SMC members and relevant government officials. 
The study has come up with a number of key findings. While handing over the activities to the stakeholders we found behavioral changes among the teachers, parents and student, most of the schools promised to continue MHM education and maintenance of the girls’ friendly toilets. 
However, the study found, due to long period of school closer because of COVID there is deficiency in the spirit among the teacher on MHM teaching. Some teacher says, knowledge gained from training on MHM teaching has been relapsed, they are no more comfortable to talk about MH issue. The study added, MHM learning is not embedded with school-based learning assessment process which is another discouraging element of continuous learning of the issue and sustainability of the learning.
We expected that monitoring visit from Education Officer would encourage the schools to ensure girl’s friendly toilet maintenance. We provided training and handed over monitoring check list to them. Unfortunately, there was no visit from the education officer due to lockdown. 
The study says, some schools introduced savings process to raise money for toilet maintenance, some stakeholders donated fund for maintenance but majority of the schools do not have fund to cover maintenance cost. There should be sustainable source of fund for toilet maintenance and accessing fund from the government is a complicated process than it was anticipated. 
In this situation, it has become challenging to keep going the momentum which was generated about MHM education and girl’s friendly toilet maintenance during the project period without support from the CSOs, government and private sectors.
Public sector: The government should allocate budget for MHM education, to construct girl’s friendly toilet at schools, to cover cost of maintenance, teachers training on MHM teaching and strengthen coordination between the ministries and departments to ensure regular and effective monitoring.
NGO and CSOs: Should involve with advocacy and lobby with the government authorities, teacher and SMCs to ensure regular allocation of fund for toilet maintenance, teachers training and effective monitoring of MHM teaching, learning activities at schools.