- Cases
- Lebanon, Netherlands
Designing Remote Psychosocial Support for teenagers in Lebanon
01 Situation
COVID-19 lockdowns disrupted Plan Lebanon’s in-person psychosocial support (PSS) sessions, exposing critical gaps in remote child protection in emergencies (CPiE). There was an urgent need for a scalable, accessible solution to reach adolescents—especially in refugee contexts—with limited digital literacy and connectivity.
02 Assignment
Plan Netherlands and Plan Lebanon partnered with Proportion to lead a fully remote, two-week Design Sprint. The goal: to co-create an adolescent-friendly, remote-first PSS solution that maintains trust, engagement, and safeguarding standards—despite barriers to physical contact.
03 Approach
The sprint combined user insights, co-creation, and rapid prototyping. A mobile-first website—Teenage Stories—was built featuring audio-based narratives in Arabic. Topics included stress management, safety, and self-care. The solution targeted both literate and illiterate adolescents, using fictional characters and familiar formats like WhatsApp voice messages.
04 Result
User tests with six diverse adolescents showed strong emotional resonance with the audio stories and high accessibility via WhatsApp links. Though challenges remain for illiterate users and low-bandwidth environments, the pilot demonstrated strong potential for scaling and impact across refugee settings.
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