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Aurat Raaj

Aurat Raaj Logo

Founder: Saba Khalid

Website: https://www.auratraaj.co/ (external link) 

Empowering women through tech for social good

Menstrual health is integral to every woman’s well-being but societal norms, gender inequality and cultural biases limit women from getting basic menstrual hygiene care. In fact, inadequate menstrual health is the 5th biggest killer of women in the world. In developing countries, women experience boundaries and societal pressure while on periods. 

Unhygienic menstrual health practices are widespread in Pakistan. Among the 37 million adolescent girls, many lack health education, resources, and support to manage their periods hygienically. Recent studies show:

● 49% girls had no knowledge of menstruation prior to their first period

● 79% women don’t properly manage menstrual hygiene

● 1 out of 3 girls miss school on their periods

We realized, to eradicate culturally instilled misconceptions & break the cycle of uninformed girls becoming uninformed mothers, we need to start educating girls about menstruation as a biological process through a menstrual hygiene curriculum.

We came up with the idea for a Chatbot for menstrual health education called RAAJI while screening our local-language cartoon series which was focused on various taboo topics in classrooms across remote areas of Pakistan. We knew that for long-term engagement with our core audience i.e girls, we needed an innovative, non-judgmental, interactive solution that could answer several of their questions around reproductive health 24/7 anonymously. With the help of mentorship, we extended our main animated character into an AI-powered chatbot so girls could have a two-way conversation and get answers to questions around menstruation privately.

Our local language chatbot curriculum addresses myths & hygiene basics that help adolescent girls living in urban slums manage menstruation with dignity. We envision expanding our chatbot’s reach to different countries, adding new topics & introducing other languages. We also found sponsorship from sustainable menstrual hygiene companies and introduced their products through our chatbot’s conversations and sponsored pilots.

Our local language chatbot Raaji which addresses myths & hygiene basics has been deployed in five low income settlement schools in Sindh and in 3 rural community centers. It has already impacted the lives of over 15,000+ girls and women in Pakistan over the last two years.