In Brazil, condoms become popular by emphasizing fun, not responsibility

DKT promoted its Prudence brand of condoms in the São Paulo Carnival of 2019, as they do every year.

This was originally published by Knowedge4Health Blog on March 11, 2019.

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In 1991, a non-profit social marketing organization set out to make condoms accessible and affordable in Brazil at a time when condoms were hard to find and expensive and the number of Brazilians infected with HIV was climbing. In the process, DKT Brazil made its brand Prudence the number one condom in the very competitive Brazilian market, and also helped enhance contraceptive security. 

The result is that condoms have become normalized in Brazil – more used and less stigmatized – and that has helped limit the spread of HIV.

In 1990, the World Bank estimated that Brazil would have 1.2 million people living with HIV by 2000. However, that never happened: By 2000, there were fewer than 500,000 infections. After peaking in 1996, according to UNAIDS, AIDS-related deaths have remained fairly stable. Brazil is now considered an HIV success story. Condoms – distributed both by the public and private sectors – played an important role in that success.

Prudencehas become the most popular condom in Brazil by taking a very different approach to the positioning and marketing. While most commercial condom distributors marketed their products for responsibility and protection, DKT eroticized its condom messaging, celebrated sexuality and used humorous vernacular, with no medical jargon. Its advertising was daring and provocative: The PrudenceYouTube page demonstrates that.

In Brazil, a charity makes successful transition to social enterprise

A DKT Brazil promoter hands out samples of Prudence condoms in downtown São Paulo, Brazil on World AIDS Day. Photo: David J. Olson

This blog was originally published on Devex Impact on Nov. 28, 2014.

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — In its 24 years of existence, DKT Brazil has transformed itself from a charity entirely dependent on international donors to a social enterprise dependent only on its own business and marketing savvy.

Brazil has become one of the centers of the social enterprise world. In 2012, the Social Enterprise World Forum was held there. I’m reading more articles, like this one in the Guardian, which claims that social enterprise is becoming the norm, “a really valid option proposed for anyone wanting to start or grow a business in Brazil.”

When DKT Brazil was launched in 1990 as a condom social marketing organization, it considered itself a charity and received most of its funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development and other donors. But when it lost its USAID funding in 2003, it was forced to become financially sustainable.

It achieved 100% financial sustainability, and more. All of its Prudence condom products make money, yet many of them are within the contraceptive affordability index, which dictates that the cost of a year of contraception should not be more than 0.25% of a family’s disposable income. In fact, DKT’s cheapest condom is only 0.22%; even its most expensive brand does not reach 0.5%. DKT believes it prevented over 9,000 HIV infections in Brazil in 2013.

DKT Brazil believes it has lessons to offer other social enterprises in Brazil and elsewhere. DKT Brazil Country Manager Dan Marun offers three:

Social enterprise for health, Brazilian style

With the leaders of Saúde Criança at their headquarters in Rio de Janeiro.

This was originally published on Global Health TV on April 27, 2014.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil — One is poised to become the condom market leader in Brazil, with 40 variants in its Prudence condom line. Its newest offering features the flavor and scent of caipirinha, the iconic Brazilian cocktail made from cachaça, lime and sugar. DKT believes it prevented over 9,000 HIV infections in 2013.

Another rescues the poorest and unhealthiest children from the urban slums of Rio de Janeiro, Sâo Paulo and other cities, and nurses them – and their families – back to health.  Since its creation, an estimated 50,000 people have benefitted from its work.

They are very different global health organizations, with very different operating models, but both call themselves social enterprises, Brazilian style, and both were created in 1991.

Movers, shakers, thinkers, doers converge on former N.C. mill town

This was originally published by the Huffington Post on April 9, 2014.

One is a British mobile phone guru who has become a storyteller of "reluctant innovators," propelling some of the most exciting social innovations outside the traditional development system.

Another is an architectural wunderkind from Togo in West Africa who leads a team that recycles old plastic bags into building materials.

And a third is a San Francisco Bay Area global health tech innovator who is building a web platform to help African countries make better decisions about HIV drug procurements. He speaks English, Punjabi, Spanish and Mongolian.

The three are very different but have at least two things in common: First, they are hellbent on changing the world. Second, they are converging on the tiny former mill town of Saxapahaw, North Carolina later this month to share their distinctive world views with hundreds of other global thinkers and doers.

Changing lives of poor Brazilian families, Saúde Criança wants to do the same globally

Saúde Criança offers job training, like this class for aspiring cooks.

NOTE: This originally appeared in the Huffington Post on Sept. 3, 2013.
 
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil -- Maria do Carmo has no husband, but has a daughter, Simone, "who is 37 but acts like she is three," she says, and is completely dependent on her. Simone was impregnated during a rape and gave birth to a son, Victor Hugo, now three, who is blind and mute, has cerebral palsy, gastroenteritis and almost died of pneumonia. This was Maria's life two years ago. The family had no government benefits even though both Maria's daughter and grandson are eligible. She wept as she told her story.

Then Saúde Crianca, a social entrepreneurial non-profit organization founded in Rio de Janeiro in 1991, came into her life. They helped her understand her rights as a citizen, and to obtain benefits for her grandson. She still needs help for her daughter but, unfortunately, the government only allows benefits for one person per family. Saúde Criança is prepared to give her job training, but Maria has no time for classes, because she has to take her grandson to the doctor everyday.

Maria is an extreme -- but not unusual -- example of the kinds of cases that Saúde Criança handles everyday in their offices in the green splendor of Parque Lage in the neighborhood of Jardim Botânico. It was created by Dr. Vera Cordeiro after several years of treating patients at Hospital da Lagoa, where she noticed that many sick children were admitted and cured only to return to the hospital later, almost always with the same disease. Dr. Cordeiro founded Saúde Criança to try to break this devastating cycle of disease-hospitalization-discharge-misery-disease.