Reimagining Puberty Education, Period Poverty & Conversations on Sex

Episode 9 is joined by the amazing Siti Aishah Hassan Hasri (@aishahdoesit), the founder of SPOT Community Programme (@hellospotgirl). SPOT stands for 'Soroptimist Puberty Education Toolkit' and is a volunteer-led project that delivers information about puberty and sexual abuse prevention to young girls and adolescents. Since 2015, SPOT has provided comprehensive sexuality education to over 10,000 Malaysian girls! She is also an Obama Foundation Leader and is part of its Girls Opportunity Alliance. She is also the 2021 cohort of Acumen Fellows, which is a group of social innovators who aims to solve Malaysia’s biggest social inequities. In this episode, we discussed all about puberty with dignity, comprehensive sexuality education, as well as period poverty. In the process, Aishah teaches us how to have confidence, build resilience, and establish boundaries!

In this episode, we discussed Aishah's journey as an educator, advocate, and activist, where we do a deep dive on her journey of starting up SPOT, why she believes education is key, and how the NGO pivot during the pandemic. We also discussed the following data points on Period Poverty and Child Marriage:

1) Over 500 million women and girls face period poverty across the globe each month. This often results in girls being absent at school and an increased risk of reproductive and urinary tract infections. In Malaysia, underprivileged women and girls have even resorted to coconut husks, newspaper sheets, and banana leaves in place of proper sanitary products.

2) In 2014, the UN expressed concern that authorities in Malaysia were encouraging child marriage to curb premarital sex and children born out of wedlock. As sex outside of marriage is an offense and abortion is illegal save for exceptional circumstances, youths are driven to marriage out of fear of prosecution. As of 2020, more than 150,000 Malaysians are married between the ages of 15-19.

Tune in to Episode 9 to hear how @aishahdoesit talks about these issues and more! This is definitely an episode NOT to be missed! Follow us on Spotify or subscribe to us on Apple Podcast! It really helps more people to discover what we do!

*This episode was recorded before the #makeschoolasaferplace campaign.

Tea & Consent Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwvrxVavnQ

SPOT Website: https://www.hellospotgirl.com/