Processes and the criteria for selecting the target audience
Pre and post-menarche girls and women are the target audience in focusing on advancing menstrual hygiene. Once the target audience has been identified, it is important to narrow down their scope by focusing on the economic needs, access to facilities, the residential areas, as well as their disability status (Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Health, 2016). In this case, it is critical to access the factors that predispose the target audiences to lack or have inadequate menstrual hygiene to be able to address the issue. Moreover, it is important to include secondary audiences as a target group, as these are the policymakers, the influencers, the implementers, and the financiers of menstrual hygiene (Simavi, 2018). While considering the criteria on which to base the selection of the target audience, it is important to work with schools as this is where one can find a large population of the target audience. Technically, the program should target the girls aged from 9 years onwards as this age marks the start of menstruation. The best thing about working with this target audience is that it ensures that the girls are informed well before they have their first menstrual episode.
A personal connection to the target audience
The target audience that involves pre and post menstruators have an important part in my personal life as I would like women to have uninterrupted academic and professional development. It does not make sense to see girls or women missing school or work respectively simply because they cannot afford sanitary towels. Furthermore, it pains me to see girls give in to sexual advances so that that they can get money to buy the sanitary towels (Deshpande, Patil, Gharai, Patil and Durgawale, 2018). I believe that by providing the right education on menstrual health and empowering the girls to get the sanitary towels is a step in the right direction. For this reason, I believe that I have a responsibility of mobilizing the policymakers and key stakeholders in ensuring that enough resources are set apart for menstrual hygiene programs. At the end of it, I know that women and girls will be empowered to lead productive, dignified, and healthy lives having managed their menstrual hygiene appropriately.
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References
Deshpande, T. N., Patil, S. S., Gharai, S. B., Patil, S. R., & Durgawale, P. M. (2018). Menstrual hygiene among adolescent girls - A study from urban slum area. Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care , 7(6), 1439–1445.
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia Ministry of Health. (2016). Menstrual Hygiene Management in Ethiopia: An Inter-sectorial issue. Addis Ababa: FMOH, MHM Policy and Implementation Guideline.
Simavi. (2018). Menstrual Health: Training Manual. Retrieved on 13 June 2019 from https://simavi.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/MH-Manual-Digitaal-DEF.pdf
