Real Talk on Rights at the International Conference on Family Planning
At the 5th Annual International Conference on Family Planning, YLabs joined a panel with the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to discuss quality and rights in family planning and reproductive health. Emily Bosworth led the conversation with Junior Designer Mireille Umutoni Sekamana, Executive Director Dr. Rebecca Hope, and Kavita Ayyagari from Pathfinder International in India.
Emily Bosworth: Let’s go ahead and get started! This session is on quality and rights in family
planning and reproductive health. I’m first going to turn to you, Kavita. Your team submitted an idea in 2016 an innovative project called Shaadi Photo, which means Wedding Photography in Hindi. We want to hear about this project that really helps meet young people - newly engaged young couples – where they are and delivers family planning information and counseling at a unique but pretty obvious place: right when they’re getting their wedding pictures snapped. Can you share with us what the purpose is, and how this idea came about?
Kavita Ayyagari: I think the idea of reaching young married couples was really interesting, even for us, and the challenge was ‘How do you get information across to them? In India, you still have a lot of arranged marriages where you haven’t even met the boy properly, so how can you talk about family planning?
They’re unlikely to visit a clinic or a doctor when they’re getting married, so we thought, ‘Why don’t we take their wedding photographer, and train them to be the counselor?’ We got a wedding photographer couple – him and his wife – to be counselors, and their studio to be a counseling center! Not only did this couple go to home visits, but they also invited them to come back to the studio if they wanted more information. That’s really what our idea was all about.
Emily Bosworth: How has this been received? What have couples been saying? Are they seeking out Shaadi Photos? Are there any stories you can share?
Kavita Ayyagari: As expected, it’s a new idea so initially I think couples were a little awkward about it. “Like seriously?” Then we found out from the photo studio owners that initially they’re awkward, but when they find out that we really want to talk to them about planning their families without any shame or embarrassment they really open up to us. And then you just figure out that they really don’t know — they’ve never talked about these issues before. That I think was really cool. We had this young couple come in, and they were like “Oh my God, I can’t talk about this.” Then they slowly opened up to say “You know, we’re facing so much pressure from our parents to have a child, but we’re not ready to.”
“CyberRwanda is what I wish I had when I was a teenager. There is the kind of information on this platform that I wish I had received when I first got my period or when I first had a boyfriend.”
Emily Bosworth: That’s great. So now we have Rebecca and Mireille from CyberRwanda, and this is an example of really meeting young people where they are, at their fingertips, with technology. So, Mireille you were a lead designer on this project, Cyber Rwanda, which provides access to family planning information, and resources, and counseling centers, and mentors anonymously through SMS and online platforms. Can you tell us as a designer, what does youth-driven design really mean?
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana: Youth-driven design means designing solutions with youth directly. It’s allowing the youth to actually be involved in the process itself — letting them help you design and come up with ideas in the way they want it. For this project, it’s allowing them to tell you what kind of information they need, what kind of services they’re looking for, and how they actually want to receive those services.
Emily Bosworth: You spoke with over 500 youth during the design process. Since you grew up in Rwanda, is there anything that surprised you?
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana: It was surprising how some of the providers were actually not willing to help young people because they held cultural norms and biases against giving quality reproductive care to youth. When I found out, I can’t say that I was happy with it. Because they’re the ones receiving these young people who come with teenage pregnancies, so they should be actively participating in their care.
Emily Bosworth: Rebecca you are the partner on this project with your company YLabs where you oversee a number of design projects like this. How is Cyber Rwanda unique and was there anything that you’ve learned so far in the process?
Rebecca Hope: I can say in Rwanda it was powerful how willing and ready young people were to share their ideas. I think that was part of the approach of working with Mireille and the rest of our young team who are really able to get real talk from young people. Because a lot of the youth would tell us what we wanted to hear. So, you really have to get them to be comfortable, and bring in young people like Mireille to say, “What do you really think of this? Tell us the truth.” So, I think that gives us a lot of confidence when we say that this is something young people want and need.
A lot of the projects I see happening globally are focusing on the clinic, and what we learned from youth in this process just made us pivot completely. Yes, we had to focus on clinics, but young people are telling us that pharmacies are a better option for them: it’s quicker, it’s more rapid, it’s more anonymous. They don’t have to wait in line and see their mom or auntie. So okay, let’s meet young people again on their own terms to make the process simpler and bypass questions they don’t need to hear like: “Are you married?” “Why are you having sex?” “Why are you here?” “Shouldn’t you just wait?”
So, if we’re really going to address this global teen pregnancy challenge, we need to come up with better, more innovative ways of getting products to youth rather than expecting them to come to clinics and providers. That’s why we came up with the idea of ordering products online or via SMS and picking them up at the pharmacy. No one is coming to your home so your mom can find out, so people have the privacy they need to be able to get the protection they need.
Emily Bosworth: What does quality care mean to you?
Kavita Ayyagari: To me quality in sexual and reproductive health services means that these services really, really need to exceed their expectations of the people who are coming, and who want the service. That means that even though I expect the doctor to be good, here is a doctor who is incredibly nice, who listens to me and talks to me about my problems is a totally non-biased, nonjudgmental way. So, therefore my experience would exceed my expectations.
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana: For me, quality is something that is effective and efficient. For example, the way information is given to young people. If that information is accurate, and young people are allowed to ask questions, and they can access the quality care that they deserve then I would say that it was handled with quality.
Rebecca Hope: For me, quality means compassion. It means caring and really connecting with your client, and trying to get into their shoes, and lead with service from the heart because that’s what people want.
Emily Bosworth: One final question. I would love to know what makes you hopeful in your work?
Mireille Umutoni Sekamana: What makes me hopeful is that the purpose of this project is what I wished I had when I was a teenager. There is the kind of information on this platform that I wished I had received when I first got my period or when I first had a boyfriend. This is the kind of information I wish I had received because there were some mistakes in life that I wouldn’t have made and there are some fears I had that I wouldn’t have had. Really, it’s something that I know that young people are really willing to have. Even the experience of prototyping with young people showed that they really need this kind of information, so that gives me hope.
Emily Bosworth: I think that’s a wonderful place for us to wrap up today. Thank you so much for joining us here, thank you to everyone for joining us online. Thank you.
