IMHER Launch Announcement
(April 2019)
I am delighted to invite you to use a new resource for those working on menstrual health and hygiene issues: The International Menstrual Health Entrepreneurship Roundup (IMHER) at www.IMHER.net.
WHAT IS IMHER?
IMHER is a new, free website designed to connect menstrual educators, entrepreneurs, and nonprofit groups with informational resources, and with each other. It has a twofold focus guiding its work: first, on efforts to eliminate economic barriers to menstrual health, and second, on helping to further the work of the mostly female innovators and entrepreneurs who address these important issues in their own communities around the world.
AsThe Washington Post stated in its recent article about IMHER (see full article text below):
IMHER is “a comprehensive clearinghouse for people interested in the issue — whether they hope to reduce menstruation taboos, come up with new solutions for menstrual equity, or just learn more about menstrual health around the world…The website gathers information on menstrual health education and products and innovations designed to address these challenges. Highlights include a database of research studies related to menstrual health management and a thoughtful roundup of settled issues and ongoing debates in the field.”
TEN KEY FEATURES OF IMHER
Scroll down to read more about any of these features.
1. An intuitive, searchable interface
2. A core focus on MH economic-access issues
3. Attention to the interests of community-based organizations
4. Based at a university with no financial stake in the MH sector
5. Targeted listings of MH organizations with clear, comparable descriptions
6. Language-searchable lists of educational resources and documentaries
7. Blog posts designed for small and mid-sized MH entrepreneurs and NGOs
8. Interactive opportunities to share advice
9. Efficient tools for those in the field
10. Opportunities for users to help build content of relevance
WHERE IS IMHER BASED?
IMHER is based at The Dickey Center for International Understanding at Dartmouth College, a university located in the northeastern United States. I work there as a professor on issues pertaining to leadership and female empowerment. Most of the information on the website has been gathered by my team of students as an applied learning experience focused on global gender topics.
As part of our educational mission at Dartmouth and as part of our focus on community-based organizations and entrepreneurs, everything on the website will always be available to users free of charge.
HOW TO ENGAGE WITH IMHER
WEBSITE: Explore the website & resource itself at www.IMHER.net (or https://imher.net/ )
FACEBOOK: Stay updated on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/globalMHM/
EMAIL: Join the IMHER mailing list: https://imher.net/mailing-list/
CONTACT: Contact IMHERat: https://imher.net/contact-us/
SHARE IMHER ON SOCIAL MEDIA!
IMHER can only be a useful resource to the extent that it reaches innovators and organizations around the world who could use more MH-related information. As such, anything you can do to promote IMHER on your own social media channels would be helpful. To make it easier on that front, here is one example of a possible message:
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Check out www.IMHER.net – a new website that makes it easy to find information about improving menstrual education and product access for those in need around the world. Also, connect with the IMHER Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/globalMHM/ and join the IMHER email list at https://imher.net/mailing-list/.
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HOW TO VIEW THE LISTING FOR YOUR ORGANIZATION
One feature of the IMHER website is a database of organizations that focus substantially on serving the needs of low-income menstruators around the world.
- To CHECK your LISTING: To see if your organization is already listed in our databases, check here (Products: https://imher.net/all-product-organizations/) and here (Menstrual Education: https://imher.net/find-menstrual-ed-orgs/). On mobile devices, listings display in alphabetical order by organization name; on most desktop and laptop computer browsers, use the magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the table to quickly locate a specific listing.
- To ADD an organization: If you do not see that your organization is listed on IMHER, use this form to suggest it as an addition to our database (https://airtable.com/shr3j0wIkvC5zw26E). Our research team will then get to work on learning more about the income and access-related MH work that your organization does!
- To CORRECT information in an existing listing: We do our best to learn from our mistakes as part of our educational mission for this project. To correct information for an organization we already have listed in our database, use this form (https://airtable.com/shr7Pdrh6gix4Gan6).
Go to our contact page to suggest other types of additions, corrections, or ideas to us (i.e., new educational resources, new event listings, ideas for new blog post topics, general feedback on the website, and the like.)
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PARTNERSHIP
We appreciate your future collaboration in helping to grow this new resource for the MH field!
Deborah Jordan Brooks, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Dartmouth College https://home.dartmouth.edu/faculty-directory/deborah-jordan-brooks
& The IMHER Research Team at Dartmouth
Ten Key Features of www.IMHER.net
1. An intuitive, searchable interface
We provide a clean, clear, and visually intuitive interface with considerable search and filtering capabilities. This makes information easy to find and use as needed. (Please note that while most of the same information can be viewed on mobile devices and computers, mobile devices offer fewer search options.)
2. A core focus on MH economic-access issues
While we invite all MH organizations to use our information as they see fit, our primary goal is to address information gaps pertaining to income & menstrual access issues, including the many menstrual product, education, & stigma-related roadblocks that tend to be exacerbated by poverty. Keeping our focus there allows us to take a deeper dive into these issues than would be possible with a broader focus.
3. Attention to the interests of community-based organizations
Small, lean MH organizations can rarely afford the costs associated with inefficiency and avoidable mistakes; moreover, they also often report feeling isolated from the existing resources, mentorship, and networking opportunities more readily available to larger and wealthier MH organizations. With a long-standing investment in issues around gender and leadership at Dartmouth, we have a particular interest in using information to help empower the mostly female leaders who manage small to mid-sized organizations in their own communities.
4. Based at a university with no financial stake in the MH sector
As a university-based and university-funded educational resource, we are free from any financial involvement in menstrual hygiene (i.e., we do not do paid consulting, we do not need to solicit donors to be able to do this work, and so on.) This allows us to provide all users with unbiased, freely-accessible information about an important global gender issue.
5. Targeted listings of MH organizations with clear, comparable descriptions
We feature listings for MH organizations (for profit and not-for-profit) that focus specifically on income and access issues. Listings are written by our research team rather than by organizations themselves; by using a standardized structure, readers can then more readily compare information across organizations, and we can integrate useful search options. Product-providing organizations can be viewed by the specific type of product (i.e., washable pads, disposable pads, etc.) and menstrual education organizations can be viewed separately.
6. Language-searchable lists of educational resources and documentaries
Our website offers listings of online educational resources, which are separated by those designed to train educators vs. resources focused on student learners, as well as our growing digital storytelling database featuring documentary video footage. All entries are searchable by language and country.
7. Blog posts designed for small and mid-sized MH entrepreneurs and NGOs
In the coming months, the IMHER blog will focus largely on issues pertaining to MH income and accessibility work; over time, we will expand our offerings in order to address gender and leadership issues, as well as challenges common to smaller businesses and NGOs working in lower-income settings.
8. Interactive opportunities to share advice
Due to community stigma, a lack of other female-focused entrepreneurs nearby, or competition between those working in the same space, innovators in this field can sometimes experience a lack of mentorship and peer support from others doing this work. Weigh in with comments on our inaugural “MH Connect” post to offer peer-to-peer ideas for how to persuade reluctant school administrators to take on MHM in their schools. We will be working on adding more interactive platforms to the website that can allow those in the field to further collaborate and build progress together.
9. Efficient tools for those in the field
Whether for one’s own use or for bringing new members onto a team, we have developed some handy tools for those in the field, including: a calendar of MH-related commemorative days, application deadlines for upcoming fellowships, and dates of future conferences and events; a large research database searchable by country of study; a glossary of MH research terms and acronyms; and more!
10. Opportunities for users to help build content of relevance
Help to turn IMHER into the best possible resource for your own work, while helping other innovators around the world expand their knowledge at the same time. Provide suggestions for additional information, new directions, or changes for us to consider on our contact page. Leave comments on blog posts to share your insights directly with others, and to build on the ideas of others. We are also open to the possibility of hosting guest bloggers for occasional posts that fit within our topic and style guidelines (reach out to us at https://imher.net/contact-us/ if you have a specific topic idea in mind.)
The Washington Post
Tracking a sensitive topic: Menstrual health in women
(An article about IMHER’s launch)
Byline: Erin Blakemore
Date: 13 April 2019
Menstruation may be commonplace, but it presents extraordinary challenges to people living in lower-income countries. According to UNICEF, at least 500 million women and girls worldwide lack adequate facilities for managing menstruation. And comfortable, effective menstrual supplies aren’t available to everyone with a period.
People who care about menstrual health management want to change that. And the International Menstrual Health Entrepreneurship Roundup (IMHER) is tracking their efforts.
The new website, developed by Dartmouth College’s Global Girls Forward Lab, is an information hub created by a research team with no financial stake in menstrual health. The stakes of the issue, however, are high. Girls in low- and middle-income countries lack information about puberty and periods, and affordability, availability and disposal challenges mean that many people go without adequate hygiene during menstruation. It’s an issue in the United States, too, where “menstrual equity” is a growing policy issue.
The website gathers information on menstrual health education and products and innovations designed to address these challenges.
Highlights include a database of research studies related to menstrual health management and a thoughtful roundup of settled issues and ongoing debates in the field.
Those debates are many.
Some researchers argue that focusing on menstrual supplies turns the developing world into a dumping ground for American products. Others cannot agree on whether better menstrual health management will actually improve school performance or increase school attendance.
IMHER doesn’t take a position on those debates. It does provide a comprehensive clearinghouse for people interested in the issue — whether they hope to reduce menstruation taboos, come up with new solutions for menstrual equity, or just learn more about menstrual health around the world.
Ready for a world tour of menstrual health access? Visit IMHER.net to get started.