A team of innovators has joined the campaign to accelerate access to Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights (SRHR) services.
The aim is to tackle the rapidly rising cases of Gender-Based Violence, teenage pregnancies and maternal mortality through various inventive technologies.
In a virtual stakeholders’ forum facilitated by New Faces New Voices Kenya on Friday, the innovators shared their web-based intervention approaches and offline digital terrestrial interventions aimed at bridging the SRHR gaps that continue to widen during Covid-19.
Mums Village Kenya acting CEO Millicent Muigai said digital platforms have been a safe haven for women going through emotional, psychological or physical abuse, especially during the Covid- 19 season.
The platforms have availed a social support network through peer to peer interaction with counsellors and lawyers and empowering them to make informed decisions.
“Our abuse-support groups on the WhatsApp platform provides a question and answer forum that has so far impacted more than 300,000 women who share their heart-wrenching stories. Initially, we successfully organised physical meetups with the GBV victims and assisted them to get legal and counselling support,” Muigai said.
“Due to the current pandemic, we have since migrated to an online platform, paused the physical meetups and adjusted our e-commerce systems to be at par with hygiene measures.”
Imara TV co-founder Stephen Maina noted that there is need to amplify sex education, especially in the grassroots through technology, to curb the prevalence of risky sexual social behaviours among young people such as ‘sex for fish’, ‘sex for money’ and other transactional sex practices going on due to financial constraints.
Through documentaries, animations and series of SRHR-related content, Imara TV targets a robust online audience.
“Instead of producing live films, we have now shifted to animated films that can be done remotely. We are also working in partnership with the Ministry of Health to create educational animation videos aimed at training medical personnel about coronavirus across our 47 counties,” Maina said.
“Our growth strategy is to expand our broadcast to Free to Air platform which has more than five million registered households with signal coverage of 88 per cent population in Kenya,” he added.
In the sphere of eco-friendly disposal of sanitary towels and PPE kits to preserve the environment, Genesis Care who are among the top three women-led entrepreneurs that won more than Sh1 million to scale up their innovative solutions.
They won in a competition held by Graça Machel Trust, Nailab and UNFPA Kenya in 2018, have taken the lead with their innovative incinerators.
The menstrual hygiene incinerators are very essential in disposing off used sanitary towels that are overflowing in latrines hence posing a threat to our environment, hygiene and at times even access to clean and safe water.
“The Covid-19 pandemic has brought about the challenge of disposal of PPE kits, masks and gloves. We have been able to innovate beyond the disposal of sanitary towels and the Genesis incinerator is now also able to provide an eco-friendly disposal of hazardous medical supplies for various counties in the country,” Genesis Care Co-Founder Catherine Wanjoya said.
In the accessibility of sanitary ware for school going children, Munira Twahir, Founder of Inteco Limited, a process innovation company based in Kenya, invented the Ari Pad ATM dispenser that offers children in schools to access a sanitary pad with a unique ID card.
“Our solution offers a supply and distribution management system with proper accountability structures and processes. By offering women discrete access of single packed sanitary pads through their sanitary pad dispenser brand, we ensure positive menstrual experience for adolescent girls in Kenya,” Twahir said.
She added that Inteco’s current focus is to engage strategic partners to help in navigating the Covid landscape and allow adolescent girls to access sanitary pads in an out of school system especially, with schools being closed.
Other innovators also included Irving Amukasa, co-founder and CEO of Sophie Bot, that has demonstrated the significance of using anonymous forums and digital chatbots to enable many people to share their plights on sexuality and sexual reproductive health via App, Telegram, Twitter and website through texts and voice chats.
It is also aimed at challenging youth representatives and entrepreneur-innovator hubs to forge collaborations and partnerships that seek to address the gaps in sexual reproductive health (SRH).
Dubbed Interventions in SRHR, the webinar is the fourth series of an ongoing campaign to fueling action towards the achievement of SRHR agendas especially during Covid- 19 pandemic.
It is facilitated by New Faces New Voices Kenya, in conjunction with Graça Machel Trust, Global Fund for Women and United Nations Population Fund.
Edited by R.Wamochie
