Tasnia Ahmed, Country Coordinator for Bangladesh

Tasnia Ahmed is working at SERAC Bangladesh as Senior Program Officer. She is acting as the focal point of the Menstrual Health Management Platform by educating 750 school-adolescent girls on menstrual health and women empowerment as well as sensitizing policymakers to assure menstrual and reproductive health for all women and adolescents. Besides this, she led multiple donor projects including Rutgers, AmplifyChange, IPPF, UNFPA, and Share-Net International. She has conducted training by educating 5000 youth and adolescents for their sexual and reproductive health and rights and accessing comprehensive sexuality education and collected endorsements from 27 Member of Parliaments (MP) to seek support and raise the youth demands in the parliamentarian committee meetings.

Furthermore, she has received the WORTH Initiative fellow on ‘The Climax of Climate Action and Women SRHR’ by ARROW. Additionally, she is acting as the global Youth Advocate at Girls Not Brides Alliance as well as executing as Partnership Representative of International Youth Alliance of Family Planning-Bangladesh. She has got the Special Mention Award as Youth Activist at Women Leadership Summit 2018. Recently, she has started to work at UNFPA Youth Taskforce Committee on Population, SRHR, and Climate Action.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tasnia-ahmed-4ab5b0111/

Haifa Mayang Lestari, National Coordinator for Indonesia

Haifa Mayang Lestari, a national Coordinator for Indonesia. She has been working at Indonesia’s Woman Health Foundation. She is committed to make Indonesia a more friendly country with the forgotten right, dignified menstruation.

Indonesia is one of many countries whose people have low awareness of dignified menstruation. It is mirrored by some cultures and perspectives that stigmatize menstruation, lack of knowledge about menstruation, and insufficient hygiene infrastructure. Indonesia has a policy for woman laborers to take two days off regarding menstruation, but it is still not implemented well due to menstrual discrimination.

She strongly believed that undignified menstruation needs to end.

Marianne Leonafe Pastorpide, Country Coordinator, Philippines

Mafe is a Country Coordinator for the Philippines. She has extensive experience in campaigns at various levels. She is a computer engineer by profession and spent several years in her career doing various roles in IT and Distribution. She finished her post-graduate studies (Master in Development Management) at the Asian Institute of Management in Makati City, Philippines, in 2019.

Ms. Inthumathy Hariharathamotharan, Country Coordinator Sri-Lanka

Ms. Inthu is the Country Coordinator of Sri-Lanka for Global South Coalition for Dignified Menstruation. She has MSc in Development and Communication Extension. She has extensive knowledge and skills in training, research, and advocacy around women’s rights, human rights at local, national, regional, and global levels as Head of the program, Vilthu, Sri-Lanka. Contact: [email protected]

Swati Vyas, Lead (volunteer) for Fundraising, Evidence Documentation, and Networking

Swati Vyas is a passionate social work and public health professional bringing over 26 years of expertise in reproductive, maternal, new-born, child, adolescent health, communicable diseases such as TB, HIV, STIs, and non-communicable diseases including diabetes and cancer in India and the United Kingdom. A large part of her career has focused on the advancement of a holistic approach, addressing social determinants of health as well as systemic changes required in the health services to achieve the SDGs of reducing health inequalities, gender equality, and good health & wellbeing. Her work spans a broad range of settings comprising community, academic, research, and voluntary sectors. Her academic background includes degrees in Social Work and Public Health and providing leadership on researching, designing, delivering, and managing complex public health programs, developing award-winning innovative public health & health promotion delivery models. She holds a reputation for championing equality of access to health, ensuring community participation in public health programs at the center of all her work.

Anne Pakoa, National Coordinator for Vanuatu

Anne Pakoa is an experienced Human Rights Defender, Education Policy Analyst, Registered Nurse and Nurse Educator driven by her passion to fight for social justice. She takes pride in providing equitable services to the people of Vanuatu, in particular, the poor and most vulnerable. As the Founder and CEO of the Vanuatu Human Rights Coalition, her goals include training and producing human rights defenders to assist in advocating for the rights of indigenous Ni – Vanuatu and to ensure that there is equitable access to social and economic goods by all.  In addition to her primary role, Anne has been recognized by the United States Secretary of State and the Common Wealth Fellow for her extraordinary commitment to fight for social justice and was awarded the 2015 U.S Ambassador Women of Courage Award. She did her 3 years diploma studies in Vanuatu College of Nursing and later went to the University of PNG to do a Diploma in Teaching Health, majoring in Curriculum Development and Education Psychology. She also holds a post – graduate Diploma in Education Administration, majoring in Education Policy Processes and Human Resource Management obtained at Melbourne University.

Mr. Cyriaque NKENGURUTSE, National Coordinator for Burundi

Cyriaque NKENGURUTSE is a young leader and actor of civil society organization and he had graduated studies at the Higher Institute of Development, in the department of public health. He was the founder of the Association for Reproductive and Family Health Burundi. He had a high experience in advocacy and lobbying for change in policies and programs of Sexual Rights and Health Reproductive and gender.

Today, he works in World Vision International and Care International Burundi as a consultant in the program of resilience socio-economic and promoting the rights and gender. He is also the National Coordinator of the Global South Coalition of Dignified Menstruation in Burundi. He is also the officer Monitoring and Evaluation Analyst in the project of the project to strengthen knowledge and skills on Sexual Rights and Health Reproductive among young people and adolescents and promote parent-child dialogue using the interactive card game KUZIKO GAME.