GUWAHATI: A woman from Assam, Mayuri Bhattacharjee has won the Ton Schouten Award for WASH storytelling 2019 for her efforts to provide safe and sustainable sanitation services for persons with disabilities and menstrual hygiene management (MHM).
WASH stands for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and supports exceptional young communicators.
Bhattacharjee is the first Indian to have received this award. Currently, she is working on her campaign, #DignityInFloods where she wants to bring more attention to WASH in emergencies and is paying special attention to MHM during annual floods in Assam.
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As part of the award, Bhattarcharjee has been gifted prize money worth €2,500 (INR 1,93,950). She aims to use her award prize to produce more high quality stories about flood affected villages in India and global audiences. She also hopes to bring a strong advocacy campaign for MHM in Emergencies in India.
"I am passionate about the concept of justice when it comes to people’s right to WASH services. I would like to use this recognition to develop my skills to cover stories which can provoke systems change to ensure water, sanitation and hygiene for all. I thank the jury for this opportunity. This award has my name but it really belongs to the communities I work with as a WASH professional," said Bhattacharjee.