Making impactful strides in the space of sexual and reproductive health education, the Family Planning Association (FPA) launched ‘Ask Sri!’, a friendly chatbot answering common questions around sexual health and wellbeing.
In Sri Lanka, effective sex education and youth-friendly accessible counselling services are significantly lacking in quantity and quality to serve the unmet needs of the fast-growing youth population. ‘Ask Sri!’ aims to fill this gap in our education system by creating a safe, virtual space for anyone to have conversations about safe sex, dispel sex-related myths and taboos, discuss contraception, and address mental health concerns. ‘Ask Sri!’ is available in English, Sinhala and Tamil and is a man-machine ecosystem that delivers accurate information about sexual health.
‘Ask Sri!’ can be accessed via http://www.fpasrilanka.org/ask-sri. Sri is also linked to FPA’s Happy Life clinic, where trained counsellors will assist you if Sri cannot answer your question.
“We are ecstatic to finally launch Ask Sri. Sri is truly a product of passion. The incredible team at YTAC – the youth advisory committee of the FPA – realized that Sri Lankan teens and youth needed access to an outlet that provided reliable information on sexual health, given that our school curriculums did not fill this need. We are working to improve Sri every day. We hope that the platform widens the accessibility to sexual and reproductive health education to all Sri Lankans”, remarked Anuki Premachandra, the Youth Technical Advisory Committee Chair.
Encyte, a local software company, assisted in creating this Artificial Intelligence chatbot. Data fed into the chat interface powers it to answer all SRHR related questions. The chatbot’s constant learning capacity will ensure that answers are more streamlined over time, adjusting and tailoring its responses according to user queries.
“Ask Sri is an innovative, engaging, and educational intervention that enables vulnerable and hard-to-reach population groups to talk and learn about sensitive and important issues. ‘Ask Sri’ is a powerful testimonial of the strong potential that lies in AI technologies for social good”, noted FPA’s Executive Director, Thushara Agus.