Danny Alexander and his IDEO.org team are kicking off a new project with Marie Stopes International around the role of family planning with Zambian youth, and their first goal is to better understand the problem.

Let’s talk about sex. No, really. That’s what we’re talking about. First times, awkward conversations with our parents, funny misconceptions, and all the other heart-pounding, palm-sweating details of our teenage thoughts on sexuality. Why are we talking about sex at work, you might ask?

We’ve just kicked off a new project with Marie Stopes Zambia (MSZ), a chapter of Marie Stopes International (MSI)—one of the largest international family planning organizations in the world. MSI has been delivering quality family planning and reproductive healthcare to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people for over 35 years, and has a reputation for being one of the most trusted, most innovative organizations of their kind. We’re going to work with them over the next year or so to imagine, prototype, pilot and scale new approaches to reaching teens with family planning and reproductive health information, services, and products. And so, as we begin our journey to understand, we thought it important to reflect on our own experiences.

Some of the things we’ve been discussing as a team will transfer across geographic and cultural boundaries, of course, but many won’t. Zambia has an exceptionally young population—75% of the population is under 25, and 50% is under 15. Most Zambian youth don’t have adequate access to family planning information and services. Teenage pregnancy rates are high and use of birth control methods is markedly low, the effects of which are significant: unsafe abortions, expensive healthcare costs, and significant burden on family budgets. This is what we’re hoping to address in our upcoming work with MSI.

Although we’ll be working together for the next year or more, we’re beginning with a 14-week intensive collaboration in which we’ll be asking, “how might we increase youth participation in sexual and reproductive health services in Zambia?” We’ll be heading to the field before long, and doing our best to document and share the process, as always. Stay tuned!