The workshop that targeted mainly HEFORSHE, helped men to better understand sexual reproductive health and people with disabilities specific care methods.

From access safe homemade sanitary pads to practical techniques on how to open the narrative for safe sexual health, the beneficiaries expressed their joy and awe towards V4dev for implicating men in this subject.

Menstrual Health and Hygiene

Predicting menstrual cycles helps to plan and ensure the availability of necessary menstrual hygiene products. In lower-middle-income countries, access to these products can be limited, and timely reminders assist in securing and managing resources.

Reducing Stigma and Shame :

Discreet notifications through wearable devices reduce stigma associated with menstruation by providing non-intrusive reminders, allowing the young women informed in-time to prevent surprises and stains on their clothes which lead to stigma and shame.

Education :

Adolescent girls in these settings often miss school due to menstruation. Timely reminders facilitate better planning, minimizing absenteeism, and allowing girls to participate fully in educational activities.

Financial Planning and Affordability :

Predictability of menstrual cycles allows for better financial planning around purchasing menstrual products, thereby reducing economic strain.

Circle of Care :

Parental Involvement

Involving parents provides an opportunity for them to understand and support their child’s menstrual health needs. It empowers parents to have open discussions and be actively involved in ensuring their child’s comfort and well-being.Parents play a significant role in providing emotional support and guidance during this phase. Involving them in the circle of care enhances the overall support system for the young girl.

Teacher Engagement

Teachers being part of the circle of care allows them to understand and accommodate the needs of students during their menstrual cycles. This inclusion will facilitate better attendance and performance of students in academic settings by providing resources such as pain killers among others to contribute to creating supportive and inclusive classroom environments, reducing stigma.

Impact of the Circle of Care

Holistic Support and Understanding

Involvement of parents, teachers, and stakeholders creates a holistic support system. It ensures that the user receives physical and emotional support during their menstrual cycles and encourages the normalization of discussions around menstrual health, not just within families but also in educational settings, leading to a more informed and supportive environment for young girls.

Reducing Absenteeism and Discomfort

Teachers understanding and supporting menstrual health needs lead to reduced absenteeism among students, especially adolescent girls, ensuring uninterrupted education. Creating an environment where the user feels supported and accommodated reduces discomfort and anxiety associated with menstrual cycles.

Long-term Empowerment and Inclusivity

Involving the circle of care in discussions about menstrual health empowers the young girl and promotes informed decision-making about their health.

Shifting Social Norms

Normalizing discussions around menstrual health with teachers and parents can influence broader societal norms, leading to a more inclusive and informed community approach to menstrual health.

Special appreciation to Derick Omari (from the global disability innovation HUB and TechEra) and Benedicta oyedayo (from the global network of young persons with disabilities), both experts on product development who played a key role in helping vessels for development in defining a good Minimum viable product (MVP).

These include preparing financially, physically, emotionally, accessing menstrual products, and enhance the distribution of menstrual products, to improve menstrual hygiene for young women.

Key Features of MENSTRUB :

• Menstrual Cycle Prediction: A cloud-based AI algorithm predicts menstrual cycles based on historical data, offering personalized predictions.
• Hardware Wearable Device Notification: A wrist-worn hardware device that delivers discreet and non-intrusive vibration notifications to the user, based on their proximity to their menstrual cycle.
• Circle of Care SMS Notifications: The system sends SMS or WhatsApp notifications to the user’s designated circle of care, including guardians and teachers, to inform them about the upcoming menstrual cycle for necessary accommodations (medicines etc). An ongoing reflection is been done to get the consent of users and include the confidentiality approach to the device. Nevertheless, considering the need of caregivers themselves on sexual reproductive health knowledge and products this means will be used to send educational content that will be useful to them and to the user.
• User and Circle of Care Interaction: Users and their circle of care can interact with the system through USSD or web links to update information, validate predictions, or test the hardware functionality.
• Menstrual Product Distribution: Leveraging on location data and the need of menstrual products based on the menstrual cycles tracked, menstrual products such as pads and hygiene products can be distribute to the users (students) to ensure that they are not denied education as a result of their period.

The hardware wearable will provide vibration to the user at different intervals based on how close the person is to their menstrual cycle.

Vessels for development, thanks to the Accessibility Innovation Challenge has been able to achieve milestone and produce a prototype totally based on user experience who were consulted at each phase of the conception. Making the bracelet viable and needed based on their day-to-day life and local environment.

With the support of the United Nations Population Fund, the Global Disability Hub and the Global network of young persons with disabilities, the implementation of the Inclusive Reproductive Health Initiative (IRHI), through co-design workshops has consulted, two hundred and twenty-four (224) persons among which 186 women and 38 men 224 persons form 5 cities of Cameroon till date.

The project globally explores the domain of Sexual Reproductive Health (SRH) and specifically that of Menstrual Hygiene Management with a focus on People living With Disabilities (PWD).

The principal objective of this initiative is to contribute to the reinforcement of the inclusion of PWD notably young girls and women on issues of SRH. Its implementation integrates the development of an inclusive and innovative solution that significantly relieve the level on inclusion of PWD.   

For V4Dev, within the framework of IRHI, the proposed solution is the electronic menstrual tracking bracelet as a tool that eases the monitoring of the menstrual cycle, regular or not, for the user. 

In the perspective of the development of this innovative tool, a funding worth 60 000 USD has been granted to the association for the IRHI project.

One of the key steps of the project is the development of the solution proposed which is the electronic menstrual tracking bracelet. To this end, some consultations with the potential beneficiaries of the solution were envisaged and conducted.

This was done in Five (05) towns of the country notably :

• Douala in the Littoral Region,
• Bangangté and Bazou in the West Region,
• Yaoundé in the Center Region
• Buea in the south-west region.

During each workshop, a training was made on inclusion and sexual reproductive health.

About the Design of the electronic menstrual tracking bracelet

The actual design of the menstrual tracking bracelet is the resultant of a mix from the outputs of the consultations carried out with the beneficiaries, medical experts, and the team’s initial design of the solution. It therefore experienced several modifications during this first phase. 

These consultations in the form of focus groups consisted in a series of opened questions to be answered by participants to ameliorate the design and functionalities of the bracelet.

In summary the problems expected by the participants that V4DEV consulted, to be solved by the bracelet are :

• Anticipating absence from school due to unexpected/painful periods
• Preventing the onset of menstruation to avoid surprises that can lead to indisposition 
• Combat early and unwanted pregnancies
• Reduce the mortality rate of young girls linked to clandestine and uncontrolled abortions.

Important point: the main idea behind the electronic bracelet is to develop an effective solution that will enable all young girls to better live their menstrual cycle and is not a contraception.

The second phase will focus on testing the prototype and upgrade features based on the user experience. With as main target girls aged between 12 and 20 years for the first phase of testing.

This leads to societal odds such as increased vulnerability to abuse, negligence, unwanted pregnancies, low access to health care services due to inadequate communication between the personnel and WYD, harmful cultural practices (abandonment, killing and repulsion of children born with disability) and financial precarity.

The insufficiency of multidisciplinary support centers for people with specific needs as WYD does not help brighten this sad representation.

They are several challenges that we identified at vessels for development (V4DEV), varying from disability friendly infrastructures, scarcity of competence in some fields, to unsuitable education to prepare youth with disabilities to the professional world. Have you ever asked yourself how students with visual impairment, using braille do after school to easily integrate themselves in offices after they left school?

How do they communicate with their fellow colleagues without disability when they do not know how to use braille?

Should we mention the cost of school supplies/stationaries of children with disabilities. Showing a major need to adapt the education of persons with different impairment to new technologies, which is cost effective and is the most common and global language.

From our consultations of women with disabilities many feel excluded from medical facilities due to discrimination, poor service delivered once you are a person with disabilities in most hospital they visited, difficulties to speak with medical personnel according to the impairment which creates a need to be assisted by a caregiver and creating a confidentiality problem while consulting.

Therefore pushing them to not ask for some specific services for example related to family planning, or other needs. Though much is ongoing, much is to be done in Cameroon in terms of inclusion, in the second part of this article we will highlight other challenges faced by women and young persons with disabilities and what can be done to tackle them.

Issued in collaboration with the Global Disability Innovation Hub (GDI Hub) and the Global Network of Young Persons with Disabilities (GNYPWD), the challenge invited submissions along the themes of addressing gender-based violence; enhancing access to sexual and reproductive health-care services and information; digital inclusion; and removing socio-cultural barriers.

Vessels for development (V4DEV), is one of the proud winners of this first edition of AccessAbility Innovation Challenge. The V4DEV project selected is the Inclusive Reproductive Health Initiative (IRHI).

The female-led Inclusive Reproductive Health Initiative (IRHI) aims to accelerate the development of a menstrual cycle tracking device to break taboos and raise awareness of menstrual cycles and sexual health for people with disabilities, especially young women and girls. It will also raise awareness by holding a series of complementary workshops and training. Combined, this tool and training aims to empower young women and girls with disabilities by providing them with insights into their menstrual pattern and fertility cycle.

Four ventures from UNFPA programme countries were selected as winners by a panel of judges from UNFPA, GDI Hub and GNYPWD. The challenge received 229 applications from 54 countries, with entries spanning six global regions. Submissions included a range of solutions addressing key challenges and barriers faced by young people with disabilities around the world. These barriers include higher risks of violence, barriers to sexual and reproductive health and rights and difficulties meeting basic needs.

The four winners were selected from teams that are driving solutions to help young people with disabilities access their sexual and reproductive health and rights. These winning ventures will be provided grants in the form of seed funding and professional coaching and will be enrolled in a series of tailored workshops to help test and advance their innovations.

Discover the four winners here:

• UNFPA  https://www.unfpa.org/press/unfpa-announces-winners-accessability-innovation-challenge

• GDI https://www.disabilityinnovation.com/news/winners-accessability

Special thanks to UNFPA, GDI and GNYPWD

Thanks to them inclusion in sexual health is gradually becoming a reality.

Tout en remerciant ONU Femmes Cameroun représentée par MR Zambo Bouchard (Expert national genre) et Mme la représentante pays de UNFPA qui officiait cette cérémonie, Mme Ornella de Vinyle a présenté le contexte de cette journée et le rôle des différents acteurs sur les questions d’hygiène menstruelle.

L’expert Mr Zambo Bouchard a entretenu l’audience sur la thématique « Briser le silence autour de la gestion de l’hygiène menstruelle »,

Mme la représentante résidente Adjointe de UNFPA a porté une communication sur l’état des actions de l’UNFPA pour promouvoir l’hygiène menstruelle au Cameroun et perspectives pour 2030.

Puis place aux échanges et photo de famille.

Nos plus jeunes élèves de l’école bilingue Les petits génies+ ont également bénéficiés d’une toute première sensibilisation sur l’hygiène menstruelle avec une cinquantaine de kits distribuées également.

Cette journée était riche en couleurs.
Nous retenons de nos écoles qu’il faut :

• des toilettes genres avec de l’eau propre,
• du savon,
• du papier toilette,
• une poubelle
• et de quoi accrocher son sac afin que la jeune fille puisse de façon hygiénique vivre ses menstruations.

Entre plusieurs points les écoles sont aussi appelées à toujours avoir un stock de protections. Les jeunes garçons savent désormais comment réagir en cas de Menstruations surprises chez leurs camarades, les jeunes filles et le corps enseignants savent mieux comment gérer leur hygiène menstruelle.