Menstrual champions training with NRSP
An incredible partnership with National Rural Support Program (NRSP) landed us in Tando Allahyar District in Sindh. Established in 1991, NRSP is the largest Rural Support Programme in the country in terms of outreach, staff and development activities. They currently mobilise a total of 3,673,278 rural men and women.
We were greeted by their leadership which included Fozia Khaskheli, Mansoor Khoso, Samina Bano, and other NRSP officers who showed great interest in a long term collaboration with Aurat Raaj to conduct menstrual education for their communities.
With 44 women leaders, we began our methodology of using personal narratives, Q&A, shared storytelling, and technology-driven curriculum to talk about the basics of menstruation. All we needed was a trusty laptop, an internet connection, a projector and our chatbot.
After describing the core objective of Aurat Raaj, we discussed ethical disclaimers regarding consent and privacy. Then the participants were asked to introduce themselves. While the audience was welcoming, the language barrier was making it difficult to communicate. And so the NRSP team Samina and Hina played active roles as facilitators and translators.
We started off with our pre-measurement survey to understand current needs, knowledge access, attitude, and practices of the participants regarding menstrual practices. Facilitators supported the participants in the understanding of the questionnaire and in the data entry and selection accordingly.
The participants also supported each other in the understanding of the questionnaire and selecting the best possible answers to highlight accurate information. Participants were interested in the questionnaire as it felt like a gateway to many unspoken words & taboo issues. The environment made it easy for everyone to share their stories.
After the questionnaire activity, we played our animation video to destigmatize menstruation and introduce everyone to Raaji. After watching the video participants shared their feedback on their experience which was translated well into the survey activity.
Women actively and willingly shared their thoughts and opinions on why Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) awareness is necessary and how it can be done, especially for girls who don’t have mothers to teach them. Women actively discussed how buying hygiene products and talking about menstruation should not be considered embarrassing, and how boys and men should also be made aware of Menstrual hygiene management in Sindh.
Women were further questioned regarding their knowledge and opinions on MHM topics by asking them yes or no questions where they were only required to raise their hands.There was great diversity of opinions seen in the women’s opinions regarding MHM. For example, while some older age women insisted that using cloth pads had been a positive experience for them, other younger women from the same community said that they preferred commercial pads. The level of interest in the topic was also varying with younger women showing keener interest than the older women.
Societal implications of getting periods for young girls were also discussed e.g. leaving school, greater interest in getting married. Other traditional perceptions, taboos, and practices surrounding MHM like evil or black magic, hygiene, washing cloth pads, accessibility of products, government laws regarding MHM, etc. were also discussed by all the participants.
Menstrual periods irregularities were discussed by the participants which became hard to answer without access to a healthcare expert. To tackle this problem, we hope to align and partner with DoctHers in the future so their expert network can tackle serious issues. After the MHM discussion was shifted to information sharing and access using digitization. The women were asked if they or their households had phones and the majority responded positively.
We then introduced them to the chatbot and allowed participants to try it out and understand how it works. Participants were excited to see the chatbot focusing on the menstrual hygiene and answering the questions asked in relevance to this.
Later on, participants also used the Aurat Raaj website and interacted with the Chatbot via mobile & laptop. The facilitator helped the participants to understand the instructions and procedure to use Chatbot for the education of menstrual hygiene.
Their response was overwhelming and inspiring as they said that this felt more personal experience because this was just like a character like us depicting the situation and stories related to us.
Fozia Khaskheli conducted the conclusion of the training session and strategies were discussed to take this work forward by engaging community leaders to include MHM in the awareness sessions.
Learnings
This was the first Aurat Raaj collaboration with NRSP and the first MHM session for SUCCESS where the presence of a male participant (Mansoor Khoso) did not make the women uncomfortable. However, Mansoor had to stay quiet and not actively participate, instead he quietly observed and took notes.
The language and formal education gap was seen as a significant factor which could be resolved by having local language facilitators.
It was seen that women were eager to ask personal medical history-related questions regarding MHM. Again, the need was felt to arrange a session with professionally qualified doctors could answer the women’s questions to give them accurate information.
Digital means like phones and established SUCCESS networks like Community Institutions were seen as an effective way to disperse knowledge to rural communities and maintain contact with them.
The Chatbot feature was new to the participants and they felt very comfortable to use.
Participants engaged in very natural and comfortable way and discussed the menstrual hygiene problems and experiences.
Participants agreed to promote the message and education about mental hygiene including Raaji Chatbot.
Taboos and misconceptions cleared through the discussion and the usage of Chatbot.
a sindhi version of the chatbot might be more engaging for the users.
Reporting by Anjum Malik & Mansoor Khoso