Abstract
Abstract The Girl Talk initiative, a collaboration of Sesame Workshop, World Vision International and World Vision Zimbabwe, is an innovative project to address gaps in pubertal health and menstrual hygiene education among pre-adolescent and adolescent girls and boys in rural Zimbabwe. Girl Talk uses short animated videos, with accompanying print materials, that use stories about a Zimbabwean school girl, Didi, and her female and male friends growing up and helping each other deal with the challenges they face as they enter puberty. Girl Talk materials are all in the local language, Shona, and are designed to foster conversations among the students and teachers about the experiences of puberty and menstruation that are based on science. The Education Development Center (EDC) and the Zimbabwean firm, NGO Consultancy Africa, were contracted by Sesame Workshop to evaluate Girl Talk. Using a quasi-experimental control-group design with repeated measures to assess the impact of Girl Talk on participating students, the research found a significant impact on participating students’ knowledge about puberty and menstruation compared with the control sample.
Highlights
IntroductionGirl Talk initiative, a collaboration of Sesame Workshop, World Vision International (WVI), and
None of these assessments aligned completely with the content covered in Girl Talk, so pulling from these assessments we developed our own assessment more closely aligned with the program in Zimbabwe
Even assuming that students are potentially learning about health in their normal classes, the difference between the treatment and control groups suggests that the Girl Talk program is having a great influence on students’ knowledge about puberty and menstruation
Summary
Girl Talk initiative, a collaboration of Sesame Workshop, World Vision International (WVI), and. Girl Talk is designed as an educational resource that is part of WASH UP!, a WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) initiative that upgrades those facilities in rural. Light et al | Improving students’ knowledge of puberty and menstruation in rural Zimbabwe Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development | 11.1 | 2021 schools throughout the country. Funded by Dubai Cares, Girl Talk aims to increase students’ knowledge about puberty, menstruation, and menstrual hygiene management (MHM). A recent study on five African countries, including Zimbabwe, found that a majority of girls report never receiving school lessons on MHM (Tamiru et al )
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