Sakhi - Simppl

Only 6% of girls in Bangladesh have a menstrual hygiene management (MHM) education and 53% of adolescent girls know about menstruation before their first period. Around 41% of Bangladeshi girls take an absence from their schools during their period, missing 2.5 days a month, on average. The popular WASH literacy-focused physical intervention succeeded in improving MHM education for women and girls in Bangladesh. However, it is extremely challenging to scale such physical interventions to large populations without significant investment of time and resources. We leverage large language models (LLMs) rounded in verified, accurate, and modified to local conditions to scale literacy interventions. Alongside a local partner, we propose a WhatsApp chatbot that generates responses grounded in accurate, verified knowledge from international health agencies. Sakhi is our WhatsApp chatbot to talk to users about menstrual health and hygiene in Bangla, English, and Beng-lish. Sakhi works right on their WhatsApp chats, with no installation and sign-up required! Our solution reduces the cost of interventions to pennies on the dollar. Sakhi provides information in text, images, and video. Ultimately, we aim to improve literacy among young girls across emerging countries who do not have access to this kind of information but would benefit from it, through a digital chatbot within a familiar messaging application.