This building block establishes a community-rooted network of trained young educators—known as Ambassadors—who lead awareness sessions on menstruation within their own local contexts. The approach addresses the widespread lack of accurate menstrual health information among both schoolchildren and adults by using peer-led, relatable education. 

Ambassadors are selected from diverse communities across Chitwan, Nawalpur East, and Nawalpur West, ensuring cultural, linguistic, and contextual relevance. Both male and female Ambassadors are recruited to promote shared responsibility for breaking menstrual stigma. 

Before field implementation, Ambassadors conduct community and school mapping to design session content tailored to local needs and beliefs. They participate in intensive residential training on menstruation, SRHR, facilitation, and leadership, followed by mock sessions in local schools. They also form peer support groups—through WhatsApp, weekly calls, and shared online documents—to coordinate, co-create sessions, and sustain motivation. 

The programme prioritises both external impact and the personal and professional development of Ambassadors, fostering the next generation of community leaders and advocates for menstrual health. Regular check-ins, planning meetings, and progress updates keep the network active, responsive, and accountable.

Product development does not end with certification. To create menstrual pads that are accepted, trusted, and widely adopted, Sparśa built a structured system to integrate real user experiences into design improvements.

This building block focuses on user feedback surveys and community-based testing of Sparśa pads. The initial questionnaire was co-designed by the team and adapted from international tools, but simplified after field trials revealed that long, technical questions discouraged participation. The refined survey is short, available in both Nepali and English, and structured around everyday experiences of menstruation.

The survey collects both quantitative data (absorbency, leakage, comfort, ease of movement, wearability) and qualitative insights (likes, dislikes, suggestions). It also includes questions about packaging, clarity of information, and first impressions. Importantly, the survey is distributed through Google Forms for easy access and rapid data analysis, but also adapted for offline use where internet is unavailable.

The next stage is scaling up to at least 300 users, ensuring diverse representation across age, geography, and socioeconomic background. By triangulating lab results (Block 3) with user feedback, Sparśa can continuously optimize pad design, packaging, and distribution strategies.

This approach demonstrates that menstrual product development is not only about technical performance, but also about cultural acceptability, dignity, and user trust.

This building block ensures that menstrual pads are not only functional, but also safe, hygienic, and compliant with health standards before reaching users. Pads are used on a highly sensitive part of the body, which makes strict quality assurance indispensable.

In Nepal, a sanitary pad standard exists but is not yet mandatory. Sparśa therefore chose to voluntarily design and test pads according to both national standards and international ISO-based procedures, ensuring user safety and long-term readiness for certification.

The quality assurance process is divided into two components:

1. Internal testing protocols
Developed in-house to support R&D, these tests measure:

• Total absorbency (immersion tests to measure overall liquid capacity).
• Retention under pressure (ability of the pad to hold liquid without leakage).
• Spreading behaviour (how liquid distributes across layers and wings).
• Bacterial load per layer (testing the core, topsheet, and wings separately to identify contamination sources).

These protocols allowed Sparśa to compare prototypes quickly and identify flaws before moving to external certification.

2. Standard certification testing
Once prototypes reached consistent performance, pads were tested in certified laboratories. Local labs in Nepal were prioritised for practicality, but benchmarked against ISO methods. External testing covered:

• Absorbency
• Retention
• Hygiene and microbial load
• Physical safety parameters

Since Sparśa uses natural fibres like banana fibre, viscose, and cotton, maintaining hygiene standards is even more critical than with synthetic pads. Natural fibres are compostable and environmentally preferable but can be more prone to bacterial growth if hygiene controls lapse. To address this, strict bioburden protocols were introduced: glove use at critical points (e.g. after fibre cooking), clean-room practices for pad assembly, and systematic bacterial count documentation.

Certification is not only a compliance requirement but also a trust-building tool — with users, health authorities, and donors — providing transparency and credibility in a sensitive sector.

Annexes include Nepal’s sanitary pad standards, Sparśa’s internal testing protocols, and hygiene guidelines, enabling practitioners to replicate the approach in other contexts.

This building block outlines the findings and methodology of a nationwide field study conducted in 2022, which informed the Sparśa Pad Project. The research examined menstrual product usage, access, stigma, and user preferences among 820 Nepali women and adolescent girls in 14 districts across all seven provinces.

Using a structured face-to-face interview approach, the team employed ethically approved questionnaires administered by culturally rooted female research assistants. This method ensured trust, context sensitivity, and accurate data collection across diverse communities. The interviewers were trained in ethical protocols and worked in their own or nearby communities, thereby strengthening rapport and enhancing their understanding of local norms, power relations, and languages.

Key findings revealed a high reliance on disposable pads (75.7%) and ongoing use of cloth (44.4%), with product preferences strongly shaped by income, education, and geography. Respondents prioritized absorbency, softness, and size in menstrual products. While 59% were unfamiliar with the term “biodegradable,” those who understood it expressed a strong preference for compostable options, over 90%. Importantly, 73% of participants followed at least one menstrual restriction, yet 57% expressed positive feelings about them, seeing them as tradition rather than purely discriminatory.

These findings directly shaped the design of Sparśa’s compostable pads, informed the user testing protocols, and guided the development of targeted awareness campaigns. The accompanying link and PDFs include a peer-reviewed research article co-authored by the team and supervised by Universidade Fernando Pessoa (Porto, Portugal), as well as informed consent forms, a statement of confidentiality, and a research questionnaire. These documents are provided for practitioners' reference or replication purposes.

Why this is useful for others:

For Nepali organizations and local governments:

• The study provides representative national data to inform product design, pricing strategies, and outreach campaigns.
• It reveals regional, ethnic, and generational differences in attitudes that are essential for localized intervention planning.
• The questionnaire is available in Nepali and can be adapted for school surveys, municipal assessments, or NGO projects.

For international actors:

• The research demonstrates a replicable, ethical field methodology that balances qualitative insight with statistically relevant sampling.
• It offers a template for conducting culturally sensitive research in diverse, low-income settings.
• Key insights can guide similar product development, health education, and behavior change interventions globally.

Instructions for practitioners:

• Use the attached PDFs as templates for conducting your own baseline studies.
• Adapt the questions to reflect your region’s cultural and product context.
• Leverage the findings to avoid common pitfalls, such as overestimating awareness of biodegradable products or underestimating positive views on restrictions.
• Use the structure to co-design products and testing tools that truly reflect end-user needs.

The project conducted an in-depth value chain analysis of mangrove honey in Kwale (Kenya) and Mkinga (Tanzania) to guide strategic interventions supporting conservation and local livelihoods. Using the ValueLinks methodology, the assessment mapped actors and flows across the chain, including beekeepers, input suppliers, carpentry workshops, extension services, traders, and consumers. Key challenges identified included substandard hive equipment, low production, lack of training, and weak market linkages. Most honey is sold locally with minimal value addition. The analysis revealed potential to brand mangrove honey as a niche ecological product. Recommendations included training beekeepers and carpenters, promoting individual hive ownership, establishing honey collection centers, and strengthening market access. This analysis ensured that project interventions directly addressed field realities and laid the foundation for the capacity building and marketing work that followed.

This building block lays the groundwork for Sparsa Pad’s operational and strategic framework by focusing on three critical aspects: location selection, organizational structure, and market approach. The banana fiber factory is strategically placed in Susta, Nepal’s largest banana farming region, ensuring direct access to the primary raw material, while the final production facility in Bharatpur as industrial hub with strong logistical networks ,enables efficient assembly and nationwide distribution. By establishing Sparsa as a non-profit, the company can foster trust with NGOs and government bodies, securing support and partnerships to distribute free pads to underserved communities. The market entry strategy follows a phased approach: For sales, we’ll start by supplying NGOs and the government (B2B) for the first two years, ensuring pads reach those who can’t afford them. Later, we’ll sell directly to customers (B2C) through retail and online for long-term growth. This plan balances social impact with sustainability. 

While the creation of local associations is a common GIZ approach to strengthen local voices and support trade in raw materials and products, it requires careful coordination with regional authorities and a clear step-by-step process. In northeast Côte d’Ivoire, before engaging local communities, a meeting was held with prefects, sub-prefects, political representatives, and members of an existing successful association of traditional medicine practitioners. The association shared why it was formed and what it had achieved, leading to buy-in and support from local authorities.

In the second step, a workshop gathered traditional medicine practitioners from regional villages. The existing association again shared its process and results, inspiring other practitioners. However, tensions between established practitioners and those with different approaches who are not yet organised were acknowledged. Care needs to be taken to ensure that the association-building process remained inclusive and balanced.

In the third step, practitioners took this knowledge back to their communities, where they discussed the association’s structure and their involvement with local decision-makers. The process is supported by a sister GIZ project active on the ground.

The use of illustrated cards 

Natural Justice was commissioned to develop a set of eight illustrated cards and a facilitator manual to support local communities in understanding ABS processes. Designed for use in low-literacy, multilingual settings, these cards simplify complex topics like the value of genetic resources, value chains, and benefit-sharing agreements. This visual tool encourages dialogue enabling local communities to engage meaningfully in ABS discussions. Only the images are shown to participants, while the manual helps facilitators explain each concept and ask the right questions.

The cards allow community members to connect the content to their own lives strengthening ownership.

The use of role games

Role games help communities understand complex processes, such as ABS by simulating real-life access requests to local resources. Participants act out roles, being community members, government, and users (e.g., companies) to practice negotiations, benefit-sharing, and communication. Performed in local languages, the sketch is repeated until key ABS steps are correctly represented, helping embed knowledge through active participation. It should be explained that the role play is to illustrate how the procedure just explained works in practice. The script is explained to all participants before the sketch begins. 

The key game changer in the process was the inclusion of young community members, known as animateurs, who had been identified by GIZ’s bilateral Pro2GRN project, active in the Comoé region. Already engaged in local outreach, these animateurs supported the transfer of project ideas to village level. With their strong standing in local structures, they facilitate internal discussion of GIZ ideas, fostering local ownership without GIZ presence.

In collaboration with the Ministry of Environment, the ABS Initiative conducted a workshop with around 40 animateurs. Using illustrated cards and role games, they were trained on key issues of valorising biological resources and ABS processes in an interactive, playful way.

The animateurs also developed initial criteria to identify local representatives for upcoming workshops. Over the next three months, they reached around 250 villages, raising awareness, helping communities select around 100 workshop participants. They provided crucial assistance with translating information and actions into local languages.

During the workshops, the animateurs facilitated group activities, led role games, translated, and enabled open, participatory dialogue on genetic resources, traditional knowledge, community needs, effective value chain participation and ABS.

The approach began at the national level, recognising the pivotal role of traditional leadership in community engagement. The National Chamber of Kings and Traditional Chiefs, representing 31 regions and thousands of villages, serves as a key communication channel between communities and the national government, even up to the presidency.

Together with the Ministry of Environment (MINEDDTE), an interactive workshop was held with ten kings to openly analyse the current context and co-design activities to better integrate local communities into the valorisation of biological resources. These sessions were not only informative but essential in shaping a locally grounded and culturally appropriate approach.

With official ministerial backing, the project engaged regional administrative representatives, followed by administrative and traditional authorities in northeastern Côte d’Ivoire, especially near Bouna and Dabakala.

At each level, interactive, participatory methods tailored to local realities were used. Authorities expressed support, shared insights, and provided key contacts. Their involvement enabled direct outreach to communities and laid the foundation for their participation in the value chains on medical plants.