The Pilots.
Every screening of the series ended the same way: girls pressing folded chits into our hands. Is it normal to bleed this much? My uncle touches me. Am I still a virgin if I cycle? Anonymous, because saying it out loud could get them hurt. We couldn't answer hundreds of chits by hand, and the questions came at midnight, not in class. So we built the thing that never sleeps and never judges — and made sure a human was always one keyword away.
Four schools in Karachi's low-income neighbourhoods — Neelum Colony, Lyari, Orangi Town. 120 girls, eleven to eighteen. A quiz before, a quiz after. Nothing else changed in between except Raaji.
the shame number moved in one afternoon. that was the whole case.
- → 500 girls in Tharparkar, animated-series screenings, 2018
- → 5,000+ at rural screenings with UNESCO
- → 250+ pilot chatbot users, 2019
- → 2,000+ women across 150 listening parties, 2021
- → 4,855 attendances across 22+ villages, UNFPA programme, 2022 — 50 champions trained 19–21 April
- → RSPN's own field report, Feb 2021: 17 community resource persons and 45 girls in Jamshoro, 44 women leaders in Tando Allahyar, 50+ leaders in Larkana
A chatbot infused with artificial intelligence — and human intervention.
Raaji answered the ninety percent: what a period is, how to use a pad, why cramps happen, whether a hymen tears when you cycle. But the flow had trip-wires. Keywords for abuse, harassment, forced marriage, self-harm, bleeding that wouldn't stop. When one fired, Raaji stopped pretending to be a friend and did the one thing a cartoon can't — she handed the girl to a person.
irregular or absent periods, heavy bleeding, pain that didn't match the textbook, "is this normal" questions no aunt would answer. a volunteer doctor replied within the hour — anonymous on both sides.
shame that had turned into not eating. fear of a wedding already arranged. the sentence "i don't want to be here." raaji held the conversation open until a counsellor took it. nobody was told to "just talk to your mother."
harassment at school, abuse at home, a girl being pulled out of class for good. a social worker — and, where needed, a lawyer — who knew which door in that district actually opened. the chatbot's real job was knowing when to stop being a chatbot.
no name. no number. no email. she still got you to a human.
"My hope is that she becomes a best friend for all girls in Pakistan. More than a Siri — she's like your best friend."
The UN's International Telecommunication Union profiled Raaji as an AI-for-good case for SDG 3 and SDG 5 — a chatbot "infused with artificial intelligence and human intervention": urgent or unanswerable questions route to a human, and one of the most important characters in the animated series is a man who teaches Raaji to cycle. "We have to create a different narrative for our men."
saba@poetica.studio