"Menstruation is still taboo and shrouded in secrecy around the world, even though it is a natural occurrence for more than 1,8 billion women and girls every month. Adolescent girls face multiple challenges to menstrual health. One of them is accurate, adolescent-friendly information about periods and puberty. Girls often meet silence or myths. Too often they are shamed and bullied, face restrictions and social isolation.

Oky is the first-of-its-kind open-source mobile period tracker and MHH-SRH education app co-created with and for girls in LMICs. Oky is an approved digital public good and illustrates innovative tech design that tackles both the taboo, stigma, misconceptions, harmful practices, and lack of quality information on menstruation and adolescent health - and the gender digital divide. Oky is built together with girls to meet their digital realities (connectivity, devices, literacy, online safety, gatekeepers). As a result, Oky is gamified and easy to navigate by design, digitally inclusive for girls with disabilities, fully functions offline, takes little storage space on the mostly low-end devices that girls have access to, is compatible with older software and accommodates phone sharing, has high data protection and privacy by design, and is entirely free, without advertisements. By using Oky, adolescent girls learn about their body, puberty, and reproductive health in positive and empowering ways, while practicing and improving their digital literacy.

Oky has been localized and deployed in 11 countries, reaching almost half a million users. Target users of the Oky global app (long term (3+months) female users aged 10-19) said they had learned new information from using Oky (82%), including access to inclusive and equitable access to healthcare and understood more about periods because of Oky (83%), through evidence-based information in girl-friendly and empowering language."

https://youtu.be/EA_HsuCphP8S

• Burundi

• Youth
• Women

"Oky’s overarching principles is to be open source and leverage peer production, for Oky to continue existing in all the deployment countries at low cost.

To foster the Oky scaling model through partnerships and collaboration, the Oky team facilitates connections and learning events. Franchise partners and deployment teams benefit from knowledge and asset sharing (including new Oky features, content, marketing approaches) available through a public confluence page. The Oky team also invests in partnership development, building out the broader Oky ecosystem to accelerate Oky brand recognition, development and scaling.

All Oky partners share the same core code and have access to any modifications/updates made by any partner in the world (including the AI- based period tracking engine). Each localisation can decide which features they want to include in their Oky version and develop new ones. The open source steering committee led by a consortium of partners, users and any stakeholder interested in the project, will encourage further funding and build out.

Oky is also a business model innovation. As the Oky app scales across countries and regions, iterated and adapted to local contexts and supplemented by relevant multi-platform products by partners and girls themselves, the Oky scaling approach deploys a new and innovative business model via franchise licenses to local partners, a concept commonly used in the private sector, but little explored in humanitarian settings and development aid. The franchising model allows Oky to scale outside of Unicef, while adhering to Oky principles and being affiliated with Unicef as the founding partner."

"The target audience of Oky is adolescent girls, aged between 10 and 19. Oky aims to empower them to manage their menstrual cycle, provide them with evidence-based information. Once an implementing franchise partner is on board, and all agreements between them and UNICEF finalised, they ideally follow these key stages for deployment. Firstly, strong partnerships are established with organizations in the target country. Simultaneously at this stage a knowledge review is generally conducted to understand the digital context, including the devices and technology used by girls, digital platforms, and existing apps. User consultations are conducted through a girl-centered design process. Girls are given access to the global app - now available in English, French, Portuguese and Russian, for a few weeks, and feedback is collected through focus group discussions, surveys, etc. Suggestions for localizing features, UX/UI changes, language and content adaptations are gathered from girls. Input from parents, siblings, teachers, health workers, and community leaders is also sought to understand their perspectives and address concerns. Objectives and app requirements are defined based on user insights generated by putting girls at the core of the app. A test version of the app is then built in collaboration with a technology partner, ensuring ongoing discussions and feedback. User review and feedback points are integrated into the project plans, and the app undergoes a soft launch. There may be another round of iteration followed by a formal launch with targeted marketing strategies. Internal capacity building is conducted to train stakeholders on app usage and analytics. Ongoing hosting, maintenance, and support are crucial, with budgeting for these costs for at least 12 months. Throughout the implementation process, the focus remains on the user, with a strong emphasis on gathering feedback, testing, and making iterative improvements to ensure Oky meets the needs of our target audience - Girls."