Girls know best: Gathering insights for our USA girl’s puberty book!

It's been a while since we shared an update on our USA girl's book project, and we have a LOT to catch up on! Whenever we are creating a new book, we always start with the girls! So for almost two years, we learned from girls across the USA. This included conducting participatory activities with girls in New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, and also capturing adolescent girls’ “first period stories” from 25 states across the country!

We heard so many interesting stories, insights and questions from girls, including one adolescent girl in LA who shared with us her worries about running on the track team while on her period, and described how she and her teammates would pass around the role of designated “spot checker” to ensure no one had any visible period stains on their uniforms before a race. And another girl from Chicago described how she would wished to learn more about different types of menstrual products that are available. We even passed around a menstrual cup and period underwear so the girls could see what those products looked and felt like and ask questions about how they work.

All of this talking to girls really helped us to understand the questions they have, and the advice they want to give younger girls who haven’t yet reached puberty – the target audience for our future book!

Lastly, as in all countries where we develop books, we also wanted to know what the adults in girls’ lives would advise, so we spent time interviewing teachers, social workers, coaches, school nurses and others who might have some good advice for what to put in the book!

Stay tuned for more updates on how we took all this great learning and began to develop the actual book!