Pakistani social enterprise Aurat Raaj looks to empower girls and women in the country with sexual health information using the internet and smartphones.
The award-winning start-up led by journalist turned social entrepreneur Saba Khalid aims to make “period education accessible to all” by means of audio messages sent via WhatsApp.
Speaking to Financial Times, Khalid said that while Aurat Raaj is “still short of meeting its objective of seeing information about periods in school textbooks, it has come a long way.”
Khalid with 30 other workers, who are called menstrual champions create awareness about periods as a healthcare matter. The service operates in different communities in Sindh. As internet coverage isn’t reliable in the region, audio messages are sent to the period champions who gather women, usually in their homes, to listen to the messages and participate in group discussions.
The start-up has reached at least 50,000 women in urban and rural campaigns through live and recorded content, including podcasts, and gatherings called "period parties."
Aurat Raaj wants to breaks taboos around menstruation and talk about matters of sex and birth control, which can be challenging when it comes to Pakistan’s uneducated poor. Khalid, however, remains optimistic.
The pandemic forced the social enterprise to scale back meetings during the last year but it has recently returned to its regular schedule and is looking to increase the number of menstrual champions to 100 in Sindh.
In an interview with news platform medium.com, Khalid elaborated the meaning of the start-up’s name Aurat Raaj. “Its based on a satirical Urdu film that came out in the 70s. A director of the time imagined a world where a nuclear explosion led to men’s role changing to women and women’s role changing to men’s. It was a way to give insight to the men of that time about how women feel every day in Pakistan. Although it was a box office bomb, but unfortunately, it became the groundwork for feminist content and film,” she said.
One of the major components of Aurat Raaj is the chatbot called Raaji. “Raaji is an animated series that uses powerful storytelling to educate young girls in Pakistan about taboo topics such as honor killings, child abuse, sexual harassment, child marriages, menstruation, and to inspire them to take up activities such as entrepreneurship, cycling, boxing, self-defense,” said Khalid.
Speaking about expanding Raaji to new countries, Khalid added, “With a grant provided by Tech Camp Cultural Vistas, we have partnered with an Indian startup and will be testing Raaji in New Delhi. I think the issues that Raaji deals with are very similar in many South Asian countries. Taboos make it impossible for girls to have conversations about their bodies. And Raaji can break these taboos in multiple languages and in different regional contexts.”
