Priyanshu Pokhrel '26

Growing up in Nepal, Priyanshu Pokhrel ’26 experienced a social phenomenon familiar to most girls and women in the country: menstrual restrictions. Many women are expected to follow customs that dictate their behavior during menstruation, such as avoiding the kitchen, refraining from touching family members, and isolating themselves from socio-religious gatherings. In more extreme cases, seen in western Nepal, these restrictions come in the form of chaupadi, wherein girls are sent to menstrual huts or cowsheds during menstruation. As baffling and absurd as these customs might seem, Pokhrel says, “This is a tradition that is imposed; you’re expected to follow it.”

But with her creative education company, Pyari Education (meaning “my love” or “darling”), Pokhrel is trying to break the stigma. Through a variety of educational programs, interactive activities, and other initiatives in Nepalese public and private schools, the company aims to make sexual and reproductive health education accessible and engaging, thereby tackling issues like sexual violence and abuse.

While Pokhrel has always been interested in women’s rights, Pyari came to be by pure chance. Pokhrel met co-founder Nikita Paudel on Yale’s campus, where Paudel is a student. The two quickly connected over their shared Nepalese heritage as well as their interests in women’s health and reproductive rights.

Over 10 days in the summer of 2023, they traveled to Syangja, Nepal, interviewing over 50 school administrators, government officials, and health care workers about menstrual health stigma and education. Through these conversations, they gleaned that politics is heavily defined by cultural biases and complicated power dynamics—where even those in positions to make change are often stymied by the people above them—and that menstrual taboos are rooted in education and infrastructure. Even though the Nepalese government provides free disposable sanitary pads to all public schools, most students were unaware of their availability; in many cases, the pads were improperly stored and became moldy. Meanwhile, the health unit was removed from the national curriculum, leading to an absence of public-school health teachers. What remained of health education were highly constrained discussions of topics like reproductive organs, contraception, and sexually transmitted infections.

Pokhrel realized there was work to be done, and the idea of Pyari began to take shape. While other organizations often approached communities with a “one-size-fits-all” solution and were thus perceived as outsiders, Pyari approached the community differently. They invested time in getting to know the local people, their needs, and their culture through an intensive needs assessment. By tailoring their approach to the specific context of Syangja, they were able to build trust and make their work feel relevant and connected to people’s everyday lives, allowing the community to accept them and their efforts more easily.

Over time, Pyari honed different creative methods to share information: educational kits asking children to write and perform short skits based on prompts—Your friend has leaked through her skirt. What do you do?; poetry and drawing activities encouraging students to think deeply and critically; and workshops teaching young girls how to sew their own reusable menstrual pads. Along the way, Pokhrel witnessed unexpectedly moving moments: a young boy wrote a poem about his mother, expressing his deep worry for her when she had to spend her period isolated.

Today Pyari comprises a team of six other full-time staff and a network of over 100 volunteers working on the ground while Pokhrel and Nikita pursue their studies. Pyari has worked directly with more than 1,700 individuals and reached over 60 million people online within the first seven months of operation. Over the next two years, Pokhrel plans to use Pyari’s work as a basis for developing Nepal’s first comprehensive sex education curriculum. She was recently awarded Wesleyan’s $10,000 Davis Projects for Peace Prize, which she plans to use in partnering with Nepal Health Corps (an NGO that employs medical and paramedical students) to expand comprehensive sexual and reproductive health education across schools in nine districts of Nepal in 2025. Nepal Health Corps will be responsible for delivering Pyari’s curriculum to 5,000 students across these districts.

“Society doesn’t change by simply telling people their biases are wrong,” she says. “Change happens when we show them how these experiences are natural—how they are part of a shared, universal journey.”