The Story

A social-ecological community of farmers, innovators and artisans working to preserve the indigenous varieties of cannabis and hemp plants and economically viable community practices around it by making eco-conscious products like reusable cannabis hemp sanitary pads, hemp seed oil, hemp protein, hemp biomass, hemp textiles and hemp buildings with marginalised communities.

We are trying to work on 3 major problems poor menstrual hygiene and awareness, lack of alternate cash crop and model for rural farmers, innovators and artisans, and environmental pollution of landfills and waterways with disposable sanitary pads.

Our sanitary pad is World's 1st lab validated and patent-pending 100% cannabis hemp fiber based reusable sanitary pad and we have lab-validated it as per IS 5405:1980 for high absorbency, leak-proof, itch-resistance, anti-bacterial and rash-resistance. My partner Sonam, my other woman family members and her woman family members are using these pads for last 12 months and they have acknowledged features like rash-resistance, comfort of wearing, and ease of washing. For this sanitary pad, we also have a cooperative model where we establish cooperative societies of farmers, artisans and rural sales for supply, indigenous seed bank (not-for-profit) and research foundation (for nurturing rural entrepreneurs and creating new innovations) for research and development, village industries and healing centre for non-medicinal and medicinal ecosystems and society (for arts and campaigns). This kind of ecosystem is significant for reviving the rural areas of Himalayas which were long dependent on cannabis and hemp plants for their survival but their economic means were taken away and now, their overall well-being is not in a good state and they need better resources and knowledge for sustainable development. We are working on the idea for over 3 years now and in process, we built the prototype and got it validated.

We started Himalayan Hemp with the objective of preserving the indigenous variety of cannabis and hemp plants while nurturing the home-equity based concept of "Hemp Family" of artisans, farmers and innovators. We also felt that conscious customers are supposed to be developed with effort by creating seminars in schools making young girls aware about reusability. After getting educated, we both felt that farmers and artisans were struggling and both the professions are struggling financially. Also, we named our organisation as Himalayan Hemp because we feel that it is threatened by existing policies of cannabis promoting the import of seeds from other countries and we want to preserve the overall biodiversity of the area. We are entering this competition with an objective to implement our model in different geographical locations especially, the marginalised communities while creating markets in same areas and other areas of the world where demand is high. We want to bring back the focus towards the concept of reusability for a sustainable and better future.