Stayfree® and Carefree® are helping expand puberty and menstrual health education in Argentina through a hybrid program that combines classroom resources, educator tools, product access, and interactive learning experiences. As part of Kenvue’s Healthy Lives Mission, this work is helping create a world where conversations about menstrual health are open, informed, and free from stigma.
How the Crecer Libre program works
In Argentina, Crecer Libre (Growing Free) is bringing menstrual education to classrooms across the country. Crecer Libre is a school-based puberty education program in Argentina designed to help young people learn about menstrual health, body changes, and self-confidence in an engaging, age-appropriate way.
By making puberty education interactive, the program helps create environments where these important conversations are more accessible and approachable across communities. It also increases product access through the distribution of Siempre Libre® menstrual health products.
Since Crecer Libre launched in 2023, the program has reached 1,000 public and private schools and expanded across provinces including Catamarca, San Juan, Mendoza, Santa Fe, Corrientes, and Misiones. Along with classroom resources, the program works with Youth, Social Development, and Education departments to bring “Escape Room” experiences to young people across the country.
How Stayfree® expanded the program in 2025
In 2025, the program shifted to a hybrid educational model that combined Siempre Libre® product distribution with an educational board game, a classroom video, and teacher guides with interactive activities on puberty and menstrual health. The reimagined program was informed by key learnings from Stayfree®’s partnership in India with Menstrupedia, a leading menstrual education startup.
From June to September, Stayfree® and Carefree® helped reach 50,000 students with puberty education, a 138% increase compared with 2024. That represents about 4% of Argentina’s total target-age student population, significantly expanding access to critical health information for young people nationwide.
Among teachers surveyed, 90% awarded the program the highest possible rating, reflecting its effectiveness in helping facilitate conversations about puberty, menstruation, and self-confidence in the classroom.
Why this work matters for future generations
By expanding access to education, products, and trusted resources, Stayfree® and Carefree® are bringing our Healthy Lives Mission to the next generation, breaking down barriers around menstrual health and equipping them with the knowledge they need to grow, learn, and thrive.
The National Veterans Wheelchair Games transformed competition into something much bigger than medals when Veterans gathered in Detroit, Michigan, July 9-14, 2026, to compete in events ranging from archery and powerlifting to rugby, table tennis, and track and field. They celebrated victories, laughed through setbacks and, perhaps most importantly, reunited with a community that understands both the visible and invisible journeys that come with military service and life after injury. For many competitors, the Games are not simply an annual sporting event; they’re a homecoming.
Co-presented each year by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Paralyzed Veterans of America (PVA), the Games give Veterans with disabilities a path into adaptive sports, one that often starts with an introduction at a local VA Medical Center or PVA chapter. Leidos sponsored this year’s Games, and ten Leidos QTC Health Services staff members traveled to Detroit to volunteer throughout the week.
Leidos QTC had the opportunity to hear firsthand from a few Veteran athletes who shared what keeps bringing them back year after year. Their stories reveal that while the medals are meaningful, the relationships, resilience, and renewed confidence are what leave the greatest impact.
More Than Competition—A Family Reunion
For U.S. Army Veteran William “Wheelchair Willie” Hendrickson, this year’s Games marked his 20th year competing. After a motorcycle accident in 2005 left him using a wheelchair, Hendrickson was introduced to the Games the following year. What began as an unfamiliar territory, quickly became something far more meaningful. He explained, “The first couple years, it was a learning experience. And then I finally grasped and understood what the Games were really about. And it’s become a family to me. This is my family.”
Every summer, Hendrickson says he returns not only to compete but to reconnect. “I come here every single year to see my family, get my batteries recharged so that I can go home and spread the joy and experiences that I’ve had with everybody that wants to listen,” he said.
That sense of belonging echoed throughout Detroit. Veterans greeted longtime teammates with hugs, welcomed first-time competitors and cheered one another on regardless of who crossed the finish line first. For U.S. Navy Veteran Davis Celestine from Tampa, Florida, who was injured during training before deploying to Afghanistan in 2001, the Games have become an annual return; he has participated for more than a decade. He described the event as “almost like a family reunion.”
Watching newcomers arrive unsure of themselves and leave with renewed confidence is one of the most rewarding parts of the experience. Celestine shared, “You see someone struggling for the first time when they come here, and to see the excitement once they’re leaving gives you that relief of, ‘I have made it,’ and now it’s for me to pass it on so I can benefit other individuals who feel like their life is lost.”
Discovering What’s Possible
The Games are designed to challenge athletes physically, but many competitors say the greatest transformation happens mentally. Christopher Dominick, a U.S. Navy Veteran from Charlotte, North Carolina, reflected on how participating has changed the way he views himself. Now attending his sixth Games, he said, “This has taught me that I can do more than just sit in a chair. I can be much more. Be the best man that I can be.”
That message is repeated across nearly every venue at the Games. Whether someone is trying a new adaptive sport for the first time or competing at an elite level, every event becomes an opportunity to discover new strengths. Celestine shared a similar perspective. He noted, “It impacted me when I first came to the Games…what these men and women are capable of doing, not having any pity or self-doubt. I just wanted to get out to showcase to the world what they have, what their abilities are. It’s a great opportunity for you to advance yourself off the couch.”
Gold Medals, New Sports, and Plenty of Laughs
There was no shortage of memorable performances in Detroit. Hendrickson entered archery for the very first time this year and promptly won a gold medal. Even after two decades of competition, he continues to surprise himself by embracing new challenges. He also earned a bronze medal in the rally event and returned to one of his signature competitions: the Slalom, an event held on an exhibition hall floor or smooth surface that tests agility, strength, skill, and speed. When asked about his success in the event, Hendrickson shared an astonishing statistic. “I won the Slalom, 19 out of 20 years.” His only loss came to a close friend who later passed away, a memory Hendrickson still carries with him today.
Dominick also enjoyed a full week of competition, participating in powerlifting, CrossFit, softball, field events, and deadlifting. Two of his proudest accomplishments this year were benching 275 pounds and winning the bronze medal in softball.
Celestine embraced many available opportunities, competing in table tennis, rugby, weightlifting, javelin and shot put. He balanced serious competition with good humor. After facing a Paralympian in table tennis, he said, “I got spanked a little bit by a Paralympian. But it’s all about fun competition, you know? Because you always go back home and train.”
By week’s end, he had earned multiple medals, including gold medals in weightlifting and javelin and a silver medal in shot put.
Taking the Spirit Home
As the Games came to a close, athletes packed more than medals into their bags. They carried home renewed confidence, lifelong friendships and fresh motivation to continue growing long after the closing ceremonies.
For some, that means mentoring new competitors. For others, it means training for next year’s Games. For many, it simply means returning home reminded that they are part of something larger than themselves. And judging by the smiles, cheers and unwavering encouragement found throughout the week.
Cisco This is the first in a three-part series exploring how Cisco Crisis Response is partnering with nonprofit organizations that are harnessing the power of responsible AI in humanitarian settings. From assessing needs on the ground to connecting affected people with information and services, each installment examines a different stage of the humanitarian response lifecycle — and the responsible AI principles that must guide the work at every step.
In the initial hours and days of a humanitarian response, accurate information is critical and potentially lifesaving. Relief organizations must move fast to get assistance to people in need, but before they can act, they need to understand. Who has been affected? What do they need? Where are the gaps?
AI has the potential to expedite and transform the way relief organizations approach needs assessments in the aftermath of an emergency. It can accelerate data collection, surface insights faster, and help overstretched teams do more with less, ultimately facilitating the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people who need it. But in contexts where people and communities are at their most vulnerable, the need to leverage AI responsibly is paramount.
Cisco’s approach to responsible AI
That tension between the enormous promise of AI and the need to deploy it responsibly is something we take seriously at Cisco. Our approach to responsible AI is grounded in six core principles that are embedded in how we work, how we innovate, and who we choose to partner with. When we support organizations working at the frontier of AI-enabled crisis response, we look for partners who hold themselves to the same standards we do — and whose responsible AI commitments, in turn, help inform and refine our own.
One such partner is Kobo, the organization behind KoboToolbox: an open-source platform that more than 35,000 organizations across 220 countries and territories rely on to design surveys, collect data, and generate insights to inform programs and interventions in some of the world’s most challenging environments. Cisco has partnered with Kobo since 2014, supporting the development of KoboToolbox into the versatile software it is today — including, most recently, its early integration of qualitative analysis features supported by large language models. Now, with the KoboToolbox AI Formbuilder, the team is taking that one step further: using generative AI features to help humanitarian organizations build better survey forms faster. By focusing both on potential gains and risk reduction, these features enable humanitarian workers to expedite high-quality, high-volume data collection without compromising on the safeguards needed to protect both the data and the people it represents.
Operational challenges, ethical questions: Why responsible AI matters
Humanitarian needs assessments form the backbone of an effective response. Field teams are often working in dangerous or remote conditions, with limited time and resources, gathering data to understand the full scale and scope of what crisis-affected communities urgently need. Traditional data collection methods like text-based surveys and paper forms can be slow, inconsistent, and prone to gaps or errors. And when the communities most affected by a crisis speak languages or dialects that aren’t well represented in those standard tools, their voices risk being lost entirely.
AI-assisted tools have the potential to address many of these challenges but, in doing so, they introduce new ones. The data collected in emergency settings — information about displaced children and families, their locations, their identities, their vulnerabilities — is extraordinarily sensitive. How do you balance the real impacts that can be achieved with the increased speed and efficiency of AI with the obligation to handle that data safely and ethically?
Cisco partner Kobo builds responsible AI-assisted tools to help relief organizations gather data quickly and safely.
Building better humanitarian data tools with responsible AI at the core
Kobo’s approach addresses these challenges by prioritizing the integration of responsible AI capabilities directly into the data collection workflow and the tool itself. Features like automated speech-to-text transcription and AI-assisted translation allow field teams to capture detailed observations in real time, in the languages spoken by affected communities. AI-powered form building helps even non-expert users design high-quality, contextually appropriate surveys in minutes rather than hours, meaning relief workers can gather more actionable data faster than ever.
“At Kobo, our approach to responsible AI begins long before the end user — from early architectural decisions and community co-design, down to selecting models that meet the highest ethical and privacy standards,” says Tino Kreutzer, Kobo’s Chief Operating & Innovation Officer. “Before writing a single line of code, we assess potential risks and test model reliability using only synthetic data. By hosting the best available open-weight models in our own environment, we ensure user data is never shared or used for commercial training while maintaining highly reliable performance.”
“Humanitarian data needs strong safeguards. That’s why we prioritize ethical principles such as accuracy, privacy, and reliability in all our work.” – Tino Kreutzer, Chief Operating & Innovation Officer, Kobo
Critically, the tool is built with human oversight at its core. By design, the “human-in-the-loop” model requires users to review, edit, and verify AI-generated transcripts and translations directly within the platform before any data is acted upon — a deliberate design choice that reflects the transparency and accountability required for the responsible use of AI. Furthermore, all AI processing happens within KoboToolbox’s own infrastructure, maintaining full data sovereignty.
Kobo’s Joshua Beretta providing technical support during the Mozambique floods response in early 2026.
KoboToolbox’s AI features in action
The evidence for what this tool can help humanitarian organizations accomplish is already taking shape. In a pilot with UN Women across 14 countries in the Middle East and North Africa, AI-powered transcription and translation features were used to process data from more than 14,000 people. The tool significantly reduced the time required to transcribe and translate responses, and because all processing happens within KoboToolbox’s infrastructure rather than being exported to external tools, sensitive data stayed secure and within the control of the organizations responsible for it. For the relief workers conducting interviews, that meant more time being present in the conversations rather than managing data workflows — and the people being interviewed reported feeling genuinely heard as a result.
The tools were put to the test in a sudden-onset emergency for the first time in early 2026, when flooding in Mozambique displaced nearly 700,000 people. Kobo deployed staff on the ground to support frontline responders, where a small team of enumerators used AI-assisted voice capture to record detailed observations about infrastructure conditions and service availability at accommodation centers for displaced families, producing richer, more nuanced data than traditional text-based methods would have allowed. The full impact of that data on the response is still being assessed, but the pilot validated that these tools can be deployed responsibly under real emergency conditions.
The potential — and the obligations — of scaling responsible AI in humanitarian settings
The early results suggest that AI can be responsibly deployed to improve how relief organizations understand and respond to crises. Kobo is committed to keeping the tool, including these AI-assisted features, free or affordable for the 35,000+ organizations already relying on the platform. With that reach comes the potential to transform how humanitarian organizations conduct needs assessments at a global scale.
“As we integrate AI more deeply into our work, we want to ensure we’re doing it in partnership with local organizations we work with, in ways that help meet the needs of the humanitarian sector without causing additional harm,” says Kreutzer. “Ethics and transparency should always be prioritized over single-minded efficiency gains — that’s our guiding principle.”
At Cisco, we believe that the potential to leverage AI as a force for good is vast, but it’s only as strong as the principles guiding its use. We’re proud to partner with organizations like Kobo that both inform and share in our commitment to mitigating the risks while maximizing the opportunities that these emerging AI technologies present in humanitarian settings, without jeopardizing the mission — or the people — they’re built to serve.
Next in the series: When affected communities need reliable information on how and where to access assistance in the aftermath of a crisis, how can relief organizations leverage AI-powered tools to help provide it — safely, accurately, and at scale?
From Filtrete™ Filters and Command™ Strips to 3M™ Acoustic Thinsulate™ and 3M™ Glass Bubbles, 3M’s Clinton, Tennessee, plant plays an important role in making products that reach homes, vehicles and industries across the country.
As part of 3M’s broader U.S. manufacturing footprint, the Clinton site brings together more than 400 skilled employees and strong capabilities across multiple core technologies. The plant manufactures products that serve automotive, consumer and industrial markets, reflecting the breadth of 3M science and the importance of advanced manufacturing to the company’s ability to serve customers.
This summer, that manufacturing presence was connected to another priority: helping prepare the next generation of makers, problem-solvers and technical talent.
3M joined educators and community leaders in Clinton to spotlight efforts that expand student access to hands-on learning and career pathways in advanced manufacturing. The programs include investments at Anderson County Career & Technical Center and Clinton High School, where students are gaining exposure to technical skills, modern equipment and real-world manufacturing opportunities.
The work reflects how 3M’s manufacturing sites can support local workforce development by partnering with schools and helping strengthen learning environments. Through these programs, students can better understand technical career options and build skills connected to the future of manufacturing.
A strong manufacturing presence in Clinton
The 3M Clinton plant is an important manufacturing site within 3M’s U.S. operations. Employees at the site help make a range of products that reflect the variety of ways 3M science shows up in everyday life and across industries. From helping improve vehicle comfort and indoor air quality to supporting consumer convenience and industrial performance, the Clinton plant contributes to solutions used by customers and consumers in multiple markets.
“At 3M Clinton, we’re proud to be part of 3M’s strong U.S. manufacturing footprint and to make products that people rely on every day,” said plant director Jason Orr. “Our employees bring worldclass skill, dedication and innovation to this work. By connecting our manufacturing presence with investments in local education, we’re helping students see the opportunities that exist in advanced manufacturing and the important role they can play in its future.”
Following the school-based events, community leaders participated in a tour of 3M Clinton, offering a firsthand look at the people, processes and technologies behind local manufacturing careers. By connecting classroom investments with real-world operations, the visit helped show how technical education can prepare students for opportunities in advanced manufacturing.
Investing in technical education
3M’s national Manufacturing & Academic Partnerships program (MAP) is designed to support academic partners and strengthen pathways into advanced manufacturing careers. The MAP program includes community partnerships with GPS Ed, FESTO, and NC3. At Anderson County Career & Technical College, MAP is expanding access to hands-on learning experiences that connect classroom instruction with the types of technical skills used in modern manufacturing environments.
“Investing in our hometown communities is one of the most meaningful ways 3M can help create lasting impact,” said Michael Stroik, Vice President, 3M Community Impact. “By supporting technical education in Clinton, we’re helping expand access to hands-on learning experiences that connect students to real-world skills and future career pathways. These investments reflect our belief that strong schools, strong communities and strong manufacturing go hand in hand.”
By supporting technical education spaces, 3M is helping students build awareness of career opportunities in manufacturing while gaining exposure to the tools, technologies and problem-solving skills used in today’s workforce.
Creating a space for future makers
In collaboration with Heart of America, a non-profit organization that transforms learning spaces, 3M transformed a classroom at Clinton High School into the Future Makers Lab by 3M. The transformation is designed to give students a modern learning environment focused on applied skills and hands-on exploration.
Through multiple new Future Makers Labs across the country, 3M is helping to make technical education more visible and accessible for students, supporting opportunities to explore manufacturing-related skills, collaboration and innovation.
“Career readiness is essential to a student’s education, and the right learning environment makes it possible,” said Jill Hardy Heath, President and CEO of Heart of America. “Through our work with 3M, we’re designing and building mechatronics labs that give students hands-on access to engineering, robotics, and technical skill development. When industry leaders invest alongside schools, it expands opportunity and helps students envision strong, sustainable futures.”
Building the workforce of tomorrow
Manufacturing continues to rely on skilled people who can solve problems, work with technology and adapt to changing customer needs. In Clinton, 3M’s investments in local education are closely tied to the company’s manufacturing presence and long-term commitment to the community.
These local events demonstrated how industry and education can work together to create stronger pathways for students — from classrooms and labs to potential careers in advanced manufacturing.
FAQ
What does the 3M Clinton plant make?
The 3M Clinton plant manufactures a range of products that serve automotive, consumer and industrial markets, including 3M™ Acoustic Thinsulate™, Filtrete™ Filters, Command™ Strips and 3M™ Glass Bubbles.
How many people work at the 3M Clinton plant?
The 3M Clinton plant has a skilled workforce of more than 400 employees.
Why is 3M investing in technical education in Clinton?
3M’s investments are focused on expanding student access to hands-on learning and career pathways in advanced manufacturing. These efforts help connect classroom learning with technical skills used in modern manufacturing environments and support workforce readiness in a community where 3M has a significant manufacturing presence.
LOS ANGELES–(BUSINESS WIRE)– #CircularEconomy–New S3 white paper: most U.S. solar panel recycling is landfilling, offshoring, or disposal in disguise; a Jan 2027 certification deadline looms.
