There’s a restriction on media that doesn’t allow for sex education as a subject to be talked about. Mexico is a conservative and traditionalist country, where having this conversation in public or with your family is usually avoided. In this case, girls learn by making mistakes due to the lack

We took advantage of a stage in which girls begin going through physical changes and when a lot of questions come to their minds. That moment is when they start their period and they begin using sanitary pads. Sanitary pads that have always been there, but that nobody had used them as a private, precise and effective medium to deliver intimate messages to girls that help prevent teen pregnancies. The average age when a girl gets her period is 12 years old, and the average age when they have their first sexual relation is 15. That’s 3 years that allow for 12 sanitary pads to be delivered to them, which represent 432 messages with information about sex education.

The simplicity of this idea made it so that its implementation was very simple, practical and fast. During the first phase of this developing initiative, more than 2,000 sanitary pads were produced, to reach 700 girls. This pads were handed out in primary schools in one State with a high number of teen pregnancies.

The impact this idea has had on the media got society to start questioning the rights girls have to a more effective sex education. At the same time the importance of family and the attention girls need during this stage were put on the table. Also, a 45% increase in donations was achieved as a consequence of this project. The goal for visits to Save the Children’s website, which was set at 300,000 visits, was also surpassed. Thanks to a monthly projection of the total amount of donations received until now, it is predicted that the necessary funding needed to spread this initiative to every community in every State of the country in the next will be raised in the next few months. The idea has obtained free coverage thanks to its repercussion in the media, generating more than $350,000 USD of free media up until now.

Thanks to this idea a reliable, direct and intimate bond was created between the girls and Save the Children. The creation of such a direct medium helped make the communication private, with a sense of customization. This helped make girls feel open and confident about receiving the information in an adequate and effective manner.

Thanks to Save the Children’s profile and database, very specific information was able to be collected. It was detected that the group of girls most vulnerable to teen pregnancies belong to low-income families. This helped decide which sectors and who would be targeted by this initiative. The effectiveness of this program made Save the Children’s relevancy more evident for trying to always find a more innovative way to try to solve problems related to children.

Mexico tops the list of teen pregnancies in OECD countries. Mexico is a traditionalist and conservative; teachers and parents don’t talk about sex education with their children or students.

Save the Children, worried about this situation, needed to create or develop a communication program that helps prevent and reduce teen pregnancies.

The objective was to create a reliable bond between teenagers and Save the Children to deliver relevant information about sex education, that helps them make better decisions.