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Sex education for early childhood remains a taboo topic among parents. However, sex education is necessary as a preventive measure to care for reproductive organs and instill a sense of responsibility in children before they reach puberty.
A team of UGM students, through the Student Creativity Program in Entrepreneurship (PKM-K), has innovated a new tool to assist parents in providing sex education to their children.
The team consists of five students from different study programs: Vicky Rian Saputra (Political Science and Government), Shahrin Nuri Ramadhani (Psychology), ‘Aisyah Khayyiratunnisa (Psychology), Muhammad Burhanudin Bachtiar (Industrial Engineering), and Devrangga Hazza Mahiswara (Software Engineering Technology).
Their innovative creation, “Magic Box: Petualangan Ajaib” (The Magical Adventure), is a board game designed to provide sex education. It is intentionally designed and packaged in a fun way to remove the taboo stigma associated with early sex education.
According to Vicky Saputra, the team leader, the innovation’s background stems from concerns about the lack of public awareness regarding the importance of early sex education.
“We created this board game and application because we were concerned about the lack of attention to sex education, and some people even consider it taboo,” Saputra told reporters on Thursday (Aug. 22).
Research conducted by Saputra and his team highlights the urgency of removing the stigma around sex education.
A survey revealed that 85% of 5th-grade students at a certain school were exposed to pornographic content, and 57% of them had deliberately accessed pornography on YouTube.
Additionally, there have been cases of violence and sexual abuse perpetrated by five-year-olds against their peers.
“These incidents indicate a low understanding of sex education among Indonesian children,” Saputra explained.
Sex education helps children understand boundaries and prohibitions related to exposure to pornography in digital media. However, parents often worry that children will become “curious” about accessing such content rather than seeing it as a preventive measure.
“We developed this board game under the guidance of experts from the Faculty of Psychology at UGM, using the Family Strength Framework method,” said Shahrin Ramadhani, a team member.
The board game includes a 40×40 cm game board, five tokens, a set of BEE cards, JOY cards, and two dice. The Magic Box also contains puzzles, a pop-up storybook, and cards to help parents educate their children interactively.
The game is integrated with an educational content app and a consultation feature. The app is planned to connect users with child psychologists for consultation services.
“We hope this project can change negative stigmatization and make it easier for parents to teach sex education to their children as early as possible,” Ramadhani concluded.
Author: Tasya
Editor: Gusti Grehenson