Juna App

An informational app where menstruating individuals can feel confident to experience their period while addressing menstrual poverty and counting with educational videos, pads donations, chats, and period tracker.

For many centuries and until today, menstruation has been a taboo that demonstrates a lack of awareness and misogyny. Because of this, our solution is based on creating a community where menstruating individuals can feel free to embrace their menstrual cycles with a period tracker that predicts dates and ovulation periods. 

Juna combines personal use with awareness. While brainstorming our enterprise, our team noticed how much the magnitude of menstrual poverty is neglected. Our actions include not only the informational side, which allows for users to connect with their bodies, but it goes beyond other period trackers apps available as users will have access to tutorials about topics that involve sustainably with menstrual products, such as how to manage a menstrual cups and how to make their reusable pad. Moreover, when the platform grows its users, we will be able to gather enough data to release graphics about menstrual poverty and feature how local governments are addressing the issue. 

Secondly, the app will map collection points, enabling the users to donate menstrual products, track the donations and be in contact with non-profit organizations that are committed to distributing the products and empowering menstruating people.

Menstrual poverty generates a massive amount of teenagers unable to pursue education while on their periods, negligence regarding this issue reinforces the taboo against menstruation, making people uncomfortable with their bodies.

According to Girl Up, an initiative by the UN, in Brazil, of the 7.5 million menstruating teenagers that pursue education, 213 thousand don’t have access to bathrooms in their study facilities. Consequently, one out of four menstruating Brazilian students misses class since they can’t afford pads.

Menstruation should not be treated as a shame. It is a natural fact. Even though we should embrace our period, the topic still has many people have a stigma around it, due to a lack of investment and care, many cisgender women, nonbinary and transgender men don’t have the opportunity to go through their menstrual cycle processes in a dignified way. 

Globally, this issue continues to be highly worrying: 3.5 billion people menstruate, and 500 million don’t have access to pads. Consequently, 35% of menstruating teenagers worldwide don’t go to school during their periods.

The data provided by UNICEF showed that the two key factors contributing to this scenario are the lack of information and the taboo around menstruation. With our reports on how nations are dealing with this specifically, Juna will also address the issue of government negligence as it happened when the Brazilian president denied law proposals where pads would be distributed for free.

Our solution has a wide range of impacts. Firstly, our solution aims to create a living community where each individual can learn while also nurturing the app with its own experiences. Consequently, the app will be a safe space and the catalyst to combat the taboo around menstruation. 

Moreover, the app will bring awareness about menstrual poverty by sharing data and stories from the survivors of this issue. Because of the donations and connections the users will be able to establish with non-profit organizations, our app will also directly help decrease dropouts in school. Hopefully, with our app community’s impact, the Brazilian government will recognize pads as a food basket item. In the worst case, we hope that at least Brazil fits into the global statistics that one individual in ten stop going to school during its period, which would be a significant improvement.

Also, our app will be a portal where individuals with cervix can feel confident. Through webinars and events, we hope to bring accessible information and awareness about menstrual products such as collectors and reusable pads.

Consequently, our initiative will be able to help any individual with cervix. We plan to act in the Brazilian community, but the idea of an app and a living community open space for the expansion of our solution. Lastly, it is important to say our solution is directly related to the Sustainable Development Goals from the UN (specifically SDG 3, 4, 5, 8, and 12).

From problem identification to the brainstorming of our solution, our team has been involved in the consequences of menstrual poverty and shame around periods. Our experience and knowledge in the issue come from the time we created the Girl Up Marielle Franco two years ago.

Through Girl Up, we developed the campaign LpM, where we hosted weekly webinars and raised 8,763 pads which helped 300+ unprivileged women from Jequitinhonha. Also, our campaign had support from renowned Brazilian female advocates, such as Tabata Amaral (Harvard alumni and deputy of São Paulo) and Raíssa Kist (Herself’s CEO, the first enterprise to develop reusable underwear engineered to wear during the menstruation)

When building our solution, we knew that a virtual platform would be the easiest way to reach people. Because of this, we did dozens of public questionnaires to understand our public. To better test our results, we created a website and an app and decided that an app would be a more suitable way to offer more specific resources like the period tracker.

During this time, we acted as volunteers for Girl Up, creating our club, doing weekly meetings, and using social media to raise awareness, speak up at our school, and spread our initiatives. Lastly, even though we don’t have experience creating online platforms, we did courses and invested our time to apply our solution. Since we don’t have financial support, we drafted our app through the Glide Free Platform.

The unmet need that our solution tries to address is menstrual poverty and the taboo around menstruation. 

Our team chose the prototype phase for several reasons. Even though we tried to create a design for our app, we are not qualified to engineer a total functional app. Because of this, we hope to receive financial help and be able to hire a qualified service to design our app according to our expectations, questionnaires, and opinions from hundreds of people that we listened to. Also, it is essential to highlight that we cannot consider our solution as a concept because we have already interviewed our target audience and understand its demands.

Regarding our prototype’s achievements, we could connect with individuals with cervix from all the Brazilian states, counting with a wide variety of ages and gender. Specifically, we did a few Google Forms and had over sixty hundred answers. The most important data is that 76% of the answers were delivered from individuals who menstruate from 15 to 23 years old.

Furthermore, when talking about donations, around 70 people donated pads in our collection points, and more than 200 people donated money through Bank transfer.

Technology is the core of our solution. We chose to create an app to reach more people and to be able to use the following tools: GPS, QR Code, artificial assistance, streaming, messaging, and Big Data. 

GPS will enable the user to visualize near collection points, being able to donate. Also, this resource enables the users to be connected with events and fairs with politicians, entrepreneurs, and all kinds of public figures. QR Codes will be the bridge for users to be in contact with disclosure links, websites and to have a quick way to donate money for non-profit and organizations committed to distributing pads for low-income communities. Lastly, the personal QR Code will be the perfect tool to divulge and share the app with friends.

AI will help the users with basic questions, being also able to direct them to specific forums. Also, streaming will be a major part because it will provide access to a wide range of videos and news related to the health of people with cervix. Tutorials about how to use menstrual collectors and how vaccines impact people’s period are few examples of what can be found. The messaging will be at the bottom of the app, where the individuals discuss at forums and exchange experiences.

Finally, Big Data will be essential for the information’s storage. Consequently, this tool is directly connected with the period tracker resource, where the user will be able to report their period’s days.

Our app hasn’t yet launched, but we have big and solid expectations for the first year. We plan to start sharing our app with our social media account and in educational institutions in the city of São Paulo, one of the industrial centers of Latin America. After this and with time, we hope to spread our app to other Brazilian states, always aiming for inclusion and diversity of experiences. 

Consequently, in our first year, we hope to reach at least 5,000 people that would become users of our platform. Talking specifically about the people that will be reached through the pads donations, we hope to raise menstrual products for about 1,000 families. This number is based on the success and goals achieved in our campaign LpM.

According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE), 152 million Brazilians (81% of the population) have access to the internet. After our app’s consolidation, we hope to reach the majority of those Brazilians. By following the estimation that biological women represent 50% of the population, our app would potentially reach 76 million people in an ideal scenario.

Our main goals for the next year are:

1. Receive Financial Help: This help can be public or private. By receiving this help, we will be able to consolidate our enterprise and hire a professional designer who can truly turn our expectations into reality.

2. Create and Launch our App: Since we already know all the resources that our app will have, from the moment we have a designer and a visual identity established, we plan to launch our app.

3. Establish Partnerships: With our final product finished and ready to reach people, we hope to establish a wide range of partnerships and donors. At the first moment, we plan to visit and host events in schools, universities, shelters, and reception centers for transgender people, where we aim to present our app as a safe space to accept and talk about their periods. Also, we hope to connect with public figures and non-profits organizations to increase our donations.

4. Host a launch event: By aiming awareness around menstruation, we hope to organize a fair to divulge our app while incentivizing people to embrace their bodies and feel more confident. The idea is that our fair counts on a vast variety of events, speeches, pads/ menstrual collectors donations, people with cervix’s health, etc.

As we aim to deliver the best platform possible, we understand that having a well-established app is the first step to reaching as many people as possible. Consequently, we recognize that our biggest issue is the financial barrier.

Nowadays our team is measuring our progress through the donations we have been receiving and the impact we have been promoting on social media. Once we are able to overcome the economic barrier and hire designers, we plan to track our progress through the number of users in our app and donations received.

In the long run, we plan to track our progress by understanding the impact our app will have on the Brazilian political system. Since our current government has been denying law proposals that claim that pads should be distributed for free in public health facilities, we hope to use our app to bring attention to menstrual poverty and pressure the government to take action. 

We will also be able to measure through the UN SDG, specifically goals 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 12. Regarding SDG 3, by promoting discussion forums and pad donations, we are caring for people with cervix’s well-being. SDG 4 talks about quality education, and by offering news and speeches with specialists, we hope to bring accessible information. 

Moreover, SDG 5 is the essence of our project because being ashamed of menstruating is a sexist construction, so our app seeks gender equality. SDG 6 defends clean water and sanitation, a human right that allows people to deal with their periods in a healthy way. Lastly, SDG 12 talks about responsible consumption, which will be explored through tutorials about how to use menstrual collectors and make ecologically sustainable pads.

Regarding our solution establishment, most of the barriers are monetary. Since our team does not currently have the ability to create an app that is fully functional, we hope to receive financial help and be able to hire a professional and qualified designer.

Moreover, we live in a society whose politicians and even most part of the population still have prejudice and fears to talk about menstruation in an open way. Because of this, we plan to invest our time to divulge our app in several facilities such as schools and shelters, where we hope to create a united and strong community willing to share their experiences and advocate against menstrual poverty.

Our solution began to be developed when we could identify the taboo around menstrual poverty. The first step to address it was to understand that we are girls living in a sexist society, where we are pressured to treat our period as a dirty and shameful process. 

Moreover, we are very well-positioned to deliver our solution because we have been devoting a long time to understanding the demands from people with cervix and the roots of menstrual poverty. The fact that we have been conducting public questionnaires, interviews, and webinars with politicians and survivors of menstrual poverty, also shows that we have been involved in this spectrum for a long time, which will allow us to design our app in the most functional way.

In our vision, being girls is what most shows our commitment and preparation to deal with this issue. Also, we are willing high schoolers that decide to break the pattern and openly talk about menstruation in our school environment. In just four months of our campaign, Livre Para Menstruar (Free To Menstruate), we could raise more than 8,000 pads to host eight webinars with accessible and true information. Now, it is time to expand this advance and our app is the perfect catalyst for our goals of facing menstrual poverty while also incentivizing people to embrace their bodies and periods.

Our team has been having three organizations as our partners:

1. Girl Up: An international movement that seeks to empower young women to advocate in their communities and fight for gender equality. It was through Girl Up that we saw the possibility to create a group in our school and be part of a huge and diverse community of girls. It was with Girl Up’s support that we could launch our campaign Livre Para Menstruar.

2. Dual School: An American organization that seeks to empower teenagers to create their projects through their backgrounds and community issues. By applying to Dual School and receiving qualified mentorship, our team could start to plan the app and learn the basics of software programmation.

3. Força Meninas (Go Girls!): A national organization that aims to empower young women. Through our team engagement, we received the award Change The World Like A Girl.

We do not qualify.

Our app seeks to end the taboo around menstruation while also fighting against menstrual poverty. As the core of our solution, we aim to break the sexist pattern that menstruation is something to be ashamed of. Since The Pozen Social Innovation Prize aims to improve the quality of life for women and girls, we certainly believe that our app will help a lot of people and align with the prize’s goals.

More than promoting webinars, events and incentivizing people with a cervix to embrace their periods and share experiences, fears, and tips, we also hope to raise a lot of donations and pressure the Brazilian government to take action against menstrual poverty. With the prize's support and financial help, we are gonna be unstoppable: we will be able to create a solid and enthusiastic living community while also helping the 1.5 million Brazilian girls and women who menstruate that don’t have access to bathrooms. 

Lastly, it is important to highlight that the prize will be able to help us consolidate our app with an innovative but also simple design, which will be suitable for all people regardless of age, nationality, or background. Thus, we believe that The Pozen Social Innovation Prize is the perfect bridge to face menstruation’s neglect and change the lives of more than 1 million girls and women.