What Happens When Women Take the Lead in Public Health

At Sundara, we believe dignity begins with access to hygiene, education, and care. And in Mokhada, a remote tribal region in Palghar District, Maharashtra, that belief has been taking shape for years, driven by the women who live there.

It started with soap. We collect used bar soap from five-star hotel partners across India and bring it to our workshop in Mokhada, where local tribal women sort, clean, reprocess, dry, and pack it for distribution. For these women, this is more than a job. It is dignified income close to home, skill building, and participation in something that directly serves their own community. None of this would exist without our long-standing partner SoapBox, whose support has made this work possible, and we are deeply grateful.

Those same women then take that soap directly into schools and villages across Mokhada. They run hygiene awareness sessions where they perform skits for children, bringing to life the danger of germs and the power of handwashing in a way that is fun, visual, and genuinely memorable. They demonstrate the five steps of handwashing, guide every child through practicing it at the school wash station, and send each one home with two bars of Sundara soap. Every session is documented and verified by teachers and local health workers. It is a model that is simple, accountable, and effective.

Through a program called Parivartan, meaning positive change, our hygiene ambassadors are now trained public health leaders, going deeper into the health challenges facing women and girls across 59 villages in Mokhada. They run fifty sessions a month across schools, Anganwadis, and village gatherings, in collaboration with the local Health Department, covering nutrition during pregnancy, breastfeeding, malnutrition, menstrual hygiene, oral health, and the consequences of early marriage.

The need is profound. In this region, 65% of tribal women live with anaemia. The infant mortality rate is 41.6 per 1,000 live births. Early marriage remains common, bringing with it serious health risks for girls who are still children themselves. Geographic isolation means that for many of these villages, our ambassadors are the most consistent source of trusted, practical health information available.

These women are changing the health of their communities from within, session by session, village by village, reaching approximately 18,000 women and girls each year.

That reach started with a bar of soap and the belief that when local women are given real support, training, and trust, they become the most powerful force for change in their communities.