Raaji threw a Period Party

“Is there a punch? Even if there is, I would not like to have a red punch anywhere near a period party!”, exclaimed comedian Natalia Gul Jilani as she hilariously narrated her journey with menarche, menstrual cups, and menstruation during our Zoom based Period Party.

Period Party was hosted by us on July 9, 2021. It was a 2-hour virtual event filled with videos, games, and performances that created discourse around menstruation! While adolescents were kept in mind while curating the event, people of all ages and genders were welcome.

After an exciting ice breaker, we played an entertaining animated music video about menstruation just to cover the basics. This was followed by our first performance, a spoken-word poem, Landscape: Girlhood, performed by Karachi-based artist and student Vin.

Later, we watched clips from kids’ television shows that depicted periods. The clips ranged from the 2000s classic animated series Braceface to Netflix’s Anne with an E. A clip from the new Disney show, Sydney To The Max was also played. These clips were not only enjoyed but also were analyzed by our amazing audience members. Later during the discussion, the lack of realistic representation of menstruation in Pakistani media was talked about.

We also played games like Period Bingo, where all the attendees participated actively. One of the activities included playing MoHim, which is a game created by Mariam Adil in order to bust myths related to menstruation. Later on, we engaged in a conversation to discuss the myths mentioned in the game.

Our goal was to make the session fun and informative, therefore, we carefully curated the content of the party. During the party, we watched a video on how different parts of the world celebrate menstruation. Furthermore, team Aurat Raaj shared with the audience about our chatbot Raaji, which lets people have comfortable conversations about menstruation.

After our sessions with Vin and Natalia, we had our third speaker session with an activist and multimedia journalist Manal Khan. The audience also watched a short film ‘Baaligh’, made by Manal where a single father learns to deal with his daughter’s first period in a Pakistani society. It was followed by a Q&A session with Manal where she talked about the hurdles faced while making the film as well as a general discussion on periods and media.

Period Party was concluded after an exciting Kahoot quiz that included some informative and some light-hearted questions from the session. We were delighted to receive a positive response from the audience about our party and got a feature from Geo News as well.

We hope that our party was the first of many and that more and more Pakistani adolescents from all backgrounds get to engage in comfortable conversations about menstruation!