Sparsh, an initiative by a family planning NGO, will enable first-timers and curious teens alike to get informed sex education and advice over their cellphones
FIRST-TIMERS with doubts about contraception, STDs, erectile dysfunction and the like will now have to look no further than the ubiquitous cellphone to get some sex education and advice.
The initiative, called Sparsh, spearheaded by NGO Family Planning Association of India (FPAI), will enable curious teens and young adults alike to get sex advice via SMS or through recordings that they can listen in to, starting tomorrow.
The NGO's secretary general Vishwanath Koliwad said the initiative seeks to address young people's use of pornography or uninformed peer advice to get information on sex-related topics.
"We have seen that, because of the prevailing situation regarding sex education, teenagers and adults turn to informal means like pornography or their peers to educate themselves about sexuality.
This may be a problem, however, since the information is not always accurate.
The idea here is that the platform is personal and mobile penetration is far higher than that of any other medium at the moment," he said.
"We are looking largely at targeting youth who've either had sex for the first time recently or are planning to soon, and even those who have unanswered questions about their body.
The target group therefore ranges from 13-30 years," said Tushar Deshmukh, director, resource mobilisation, at FPAI.
The organisation is hoping that youth looking for information on subjects like masturbation, menstruation and AIDS (see box) will call them rather than going in for uninformed advice.
The service is being launched only in three languages English, Hindi and Marathi initially but FPAI is tying up with an education and technology services provider to expand it to 12 Indian and six international languages.
Koliwad said that officials from the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have also expressed interest in the programme and have asked for a demonstration after its launch tomorrow.
"They were quite interested in our product as it is backed by research conducted over two years.
We are giving them a demonstration after the launch and they have also consented to be part of the event that day," he said the service will be free for 15 days from the launch, following which users will have to pay a monthly fee to avail of it.
