With the sudden surge in COVID-19 cases, doing groundwork became difficult. Reaching out and visiting the sanitation workers is a danger to both their health as well as ours. We originally focused more on tangible, hands-on projects than reaching out via social media. For some time we considered taking a break altogether, but we realised that difficult times call for new experiences.
The Red Lotus conducted its very first webinar on 21st April 2021, in collaboration with The Rotaract Club of Ruia College, Mumbai.
Keeping our cause in mind, the topic of our webinar was Sustainable Menstruation. Like any first, the task was exciting and daunting at the same time. We researched more in-depth than we ever had and discovered some facts that even we were shocked to learn. For example, an average sanitary napkin is used for 5 hours at most, but the exact same napkin takes up to 43,80,000 hours to decompose. This is because by far the largest component of a DSN (disposable sanitary napkin) is plastic.
After compiling and condensing all our data into short digestible points, it was time to let our creative juices flow. Setting a theme, finding the most appealing format, and making an engrossing presentation in general, was quite the challenge. But after a lot of trial and error, and even more constructive criticism from our supporters, we finally made our best presentation.
Now, came the most time-consuming part of this whole ordeal — the narration. While all three of us are fairly good at public speaking, none of us had any experience with doing it online. And let me tell you, speaking to an audience online is a whole other ball game than speaking to them in real life. Perhaps the internet connection will go haywire at any second, maybe you’ve been sharing the wrong tab this entire time, maybe you’ve been muted this entire time, or what if your background has that super embarrassing toy from when you were two? To cut it short, we were anxious. After practice after practice, we finally settled on a flow we were comfortable with.
And now, the day of reckoning, the day of our webinar. The three of us had a 30-minute motivation meeting and we were enthralled to get the show on the road. To say the webinar went well would be an understatement, the presentation went smoothly and the audience was ebullient. Ah, the fruit that worked hardest is always the sweetest.
The webinar was a wonderful learning experience! Our second webinar, with Vanita Vibhag, was a success too.
We, at The Red Lotus, are definitely looking forward to holding another webinar very soon. Hope we see you then!