The Divine Divas

A full-service, teen-only clinic experience designed to prevent unplanned pregnancy in Zambia.

TEAM: IDEO.org in partnership with Marie Stopes International & The Hewlett Foundation

The Space

The physical space of the Diva Centre is designed to make the experience feel less clinical, while still giving high quality clinical services.

Stronger as a Group

Girls are welcome to join the nurse in groups or individually to learn about birth control. Didn't we all want a girl friend with us when we were young? Clients are never pressured and are always welcome back to ask questions.

Girl Talk

A Diva nurse walking a group of girls through the details of how an IUD works, with a little help from "The Supergirl"

The Diva Booklet

The Diva Booklet comes with myth busters (myths about birth control are rampant!) and a detailed description of each Diva—her story, her personality and more clinical information about each birth control's application and common side effects.

The Diva Kit

The Diva Kit is designed to guide conversations between nurses and clients in the most effective, comfortable way (which took a lot of prototyping to develop!) It begins with myth busting and ends with a layout of the physical birth control methods at the bottom of the box.

Product Display

The last page of the Diva Kit is made to carefully display samples of real products.

A Teen Space. Not a Family Planning Clinic

The Diva Centre is somewhere teens can walk into without feeling scared that someone will see you come in and judge them. It's a teen friendly space where everyone is welcome to hang out, gossip and do their nails. This is important in a small community where everyone knows everyone and teens don't want to take the chance of getting "caught" walking into a family planning clinic.

Teen Connectors

Information about family planning is limited, and the little that exists is often wrong. The Teen Connectors are a passionate, outgoing group of college-aged girls that join the Diva initiative to connect with girls on a peer level with accurate information. They provide guidance and support to any girl that chooses to learn more about birth control.

The Diva Nurse

The nurse selection process is tricky, but getting the perfect nurse is critical to making the process successful. The Diva nurse must know how to connect with young girls, understand them and let them know that they are never judged but that she's there to lend a helping hand.

THE CHALLENGE

More than half of the population of Zambia is under 18 years old, and the teen pregnancy rate is startlingly high (and growing). Despite years of effort and many organizations trying to solve this, traditional methods of family planning services failed to reach teens. IDEO.org was hired to design a radically new—and effective—solution to lower the teen pregnancy rates in Zambia.

MEET THE DIVAS

The Diva Centres are teen-only mini-clinics designed to reach teens on their turf and in their own language. Nail polish, teen magazines, fun classes and the colorful design of the clinic itself make the Diva Centre a place teens want to visit and return to—quite different from existing clinics which are designed to feel sterile and medical.

The Divine Divas are the heart of the design.The Divas are five inspirational characters that each represent a different contraceptive method, bringing the method to life by embodying it’s characteristics and qualities. Miss Perfectionist, for example, is always on time and follows a perfect routine—important qualities for someone choosing to take the birth control pill, which has to be taken every day. Whereas previous services made reproductive health feel clinical and often intimidating, the Divas help teens relate to the topic, while making complicated decisions clearer and more memorable.

Three Diva Centres are now running in Lusaka, Zambia, with thousands of girls already receiving information and services since launch. Marie Stopes International is working to expand the idea throughout Zambia and their other East African programs, and the project has garnered tremendous acclaim, both within Zambia and around the world.

Fun fact: "Diva' is a great word in Zambia that describes a confident, beautiful woman in control of her decisions. It came from a workshop we did with boys and they were the ones to describe their dream wife as a diva. A woman who is "in control, happy and disease-free".

HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE PROCESS

Hidden in Plain Sight:

An early idea we all loved was speakeasy-style clinics—completely underground spaces that protected teens from the stigma associated with visiting a clinic. After prototyping this idea, we realized it would never work—teens felt they’d be in even more trouble if they were caught entering an underground space, so we had to design something that wasn’t so secretive. They needed something hidden in plain sight.

Do you want french tips? Do you use condoms? Would you like glitter too?

During research, we set up a free nail salon as a way of inviting teen girls in and having more relaxed conversations, and the quality of our interviews went up dramatically. The girls were comfortable sharing their experiences and asking more questions. Nail salons are feminine environments where girls are looking down and are not expected to have eye contact, which makes it easier to ask even the hardest questions. It was so successful in our research, in fact, that we incorporated the idea into the final design of the clinic experience—there’s free nail polish in every Diva Centre!

THE DIVAS OUT IN THE WORLD

Read more about the Divas on the IDEO.org site here:
https://www.ideo.org/project/diva-centres

AWARDS

The Divas just won Core77 Best Service Design Award and Runner up for Design for Social Impact Award. Find out more here.

Download: IDEO.org Impact Report