Menstrual hygiene

Oky is the world’s first digital menstruation app co-created with and for girls., The app provides evidence-based information about periods, puberty, and reproductive health in fun, creative and positive ways, straight into girls’ hands. Oky is tailored to girls’ lives, language and digital realities and is currently live in Mongolia and Indonesia, with more markets coming soon. Oky has been recognized by the Digital Public…, Raising the bar: girl-centered design, Digital public goods uphold internationally agreed principles for digital development . The first principle is to design with the user. But despite best intentions, teams habitually design with a user base that is predominantly male. Too often, girls are left out of co-creation, design, or product testing. What is different when designing with…, Matching tech to girl user requirements , Through this girl-centered design, Oky emerged as a gamified, light-weight application. It runs offline, is easy to navigate by design, and includes a read-out option and visual tutorials. It also allows for girls who share phones - either within the family or with peers - to have high data protection and privacy.   What might make your digital…, Building an open-source (girl) community, As a digital public good, Oky upholds particular standards - and in line with the DPG Standard, Oky is open source. The Oky source code is publicly available on GitHub .  Being open-source allows Oky to continuously be improved, through a global community. Oky’s community is growing rapidly, with implementation partners developing Oky in 12…, Breaking the digital glass ceiling, Innovation holds incredible promise to benefit more children and young people in new ways. This applies not just to technology, but to new partnerships, new ways of working, and new ways to scale promising services.  To reach more young people means girls must be deliberately included. Oky not only meets best practices for digital development, but…

"I want to know what to do when I get my first period and what changes to expect during puberty so I feel prepared, assured and confident to manage them.” “I want to know if it is dangerous if I miss a period and if irregular periods are abnormal so I can stop being anxious." Girls have important questions about their health, and every day more…

Solutions should always be grounded in the people who use them. This is the value of “human-centered design”, an approach UNICEF is using to complement traditional expert- and research-based thinking. By understanding the people who will use the solutions — their wants and needs — UNICEF is developing creative, sustainable solutions they will…, Winning proposals included:, The Brown Paper Bag project, a digital online community for girls to discuss menstruation with their peers Raaji , a female character who tackles the shame and stigma surrounding periods and conveys powerful messages to young women in short animations MAAM, a fun and interactive virtual support network to de-stigmatize conversations around…

Talking about menstruation should not make people, particularly young girls, and boys – feel uneasy, or embarrassed. Menstruation is a normal, major stage of puberty in girls. However, many girls in Pakistan and around the world still feel ashamed to talk about their periods and don’t have mediums to chat about it, while boys shy away from the…

“When I first got my period I didn’t tell anyone for several days because I was ashamed, it took me two months to open up to mother.”  –  An 18-year old girl in Pakistan describes her experience through a U-Report poll on menstrual hygiene management (MHM) conducted on the 16th of February, 2017.  , Prevailing social norms surrounding menstruation, Adolescent girls in Pakistan are often unaware or unprepared for the onset of menstruation (menarche) – mostly due to a culture of silence surrounding women’s reproductive health issues of which menstruation is a part. This lack of preparation, knowledge and poor hygienic practices during menstruation presents negative impacts on girls’ self-…, Poll reveals girls lack knowledge of menstrual hygiene, To better understand this need, UNICEF launched an SMS poll on the 9th of March 2017 targeting 3,800 females aged between 10 and 35 via the  U-Report platform . U-Report is a social messaging tool empowering anyone, especially the youth in any community globally, to respond to polls, and report issues that affect them. The poll sent positive…, Girls’ voices echo the importance of breaking the silence around menarche, “ I wish every girl has proper knowledge and guidance so that when a girl reaches her puberty for the first time, she is confident and not panicked,”  said a young female poll respondent. “When I purchase sanitary napkins from a local store, they always wrap it in a newspaper or a paper bag so that no boys or men can see what I’m purchasing, why…, Social media outreach offers girls a platform to ask questions, In addition to sending a poll, UNICEF also hosted a 3-hour live chat on the U-Report platform – targeting all 25,000 registered U-Reporters in Pakistan. UNICEF responded to over 500 of the 2,500 questions sent by girls and boys across the country via SMS messages (free of charge).A list of frequently asked questions and answers were also created…