Ummeykusum is a young Social Worker who is working in the field of Women Empowerment. She feels that topics like Menstrual Hygiene and HIV are still taboo in our society and this needs to end.

Ummeykusum Kanor is 19 years old and is from Udaipur, Rajasthan. She is doing her BBA in Entrepreneurship from the Faculty of Management Studies, MLSU.

Ummeykusum says that Social Service for her started as a two-month college project named ‘Anandam’. However, now it has moved ahead from being just a project and she is highly dedicated to this field. She has a group of twelve people and together they are working to create awareness on issues like Women Empowerment, Menstrual Health, and HIV-AIDS.

She shares that knowledge and awareness regarding Menstrual Health and HIV are very less. People still consider these topics taboo. Ummeykusum says that a large number of women don’t talk about it openly and suffer from health issues due to their unawareness. In order to create awareness about this, Ummeykusum and her team present street plays on the topics.

She says they started reaching out to authorities for permissions and started doing ‘Nukkad Nataks’ at three places in a day. They continued this for seven days and on the last day, which was Christmas, they performed it in a village. She says that people were very excited about their play and gathered in large numbers. The team dressed as Santa Claus and distributed sanitary pads to women. They were also accompanied by a doctor who told the gathering about menstrual health.

Ummeykusum shares that they also visited an NGO which was looking after HIV Positive young girls who had been deserted by their families. They took food and clothing for these girls. She says that they played various games and distributed gifts to them. Ummeykusum remembers that those girls were very happy as no one ever came to meet them due to wrong perceptions about AIDS.

She shares that they also wanted to help the Police personnel who she considers as heroes. They visited many Police Stations and Circles and distributed refreshments to them. She feels that Police personnel work very hard for our safety and we should acknowledge it time and again.

Sharing about difficulties faced by her, Ummeykusum says that there were many. Sometimes their intention to help the poor and needy would be considered just a photo-op by many. However, she says that difficulties are everywhere and she will not stop working in this field.

Ummeykusum feels that everyone is a born leader. Leadership qualities are present in everyone and only improving them is what one needs to do. She feels that it is hard to learn these qualities and only a person born with it can become a good leader. She feels that she is a leader as many times when the team used to be disappointed, she had cheered them up. Ummeykusum has even suggested some good ideas to enhance the functioning of the group.

She says that Education and Experience are both important. One needs the experience to work in the field properly and education to learn technological advancements taking place in the field. With any one of the two missing, it becomes tough to work in the field.

If given a chance to Time Travel, she would like to go back to her school days and again do all the fun she used to do with her friends.