The Challenge

In cooperation with the City of Eindhoven, we were a group of service design students from KISD tasked with developing Levenskracht – a service that improves the living situation of street prostitutes. The service was successfully implemented, and it created measurable value for the City of Eindhoven.

​Our approach was to initially observe the current practices at the Tippelzone and conduct interviews with the prostitutes, social workers and volunteers supporting the women mentally and physically. This helped us gain an understanding of the issues and perceived shortcomings of the current situation. It became apparent that the existing setting was too rigid, providing no incentives for the prostitutes to undergo detoxification and insufficient cooperation between the supporting social services to help these women holistically. It needed a system approach and a change in attitude of all the stakeholders involved.

Outcome

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Our design solution is an innovative public service called Levenskracht (Dutch for vitality) which is a collaboration between the different supporting social services. It provides basic and extended support lines to gradually give the prostitutes more responsibility for their own lives by providing intensive support, health services, education, and motivation. These service lines are co-created with the women involved.

This solution was presented at a conference in Eindhoven in 2008 and a solution inspired by it helped to close the Tippelzone in 2011.

In 2010, Levenskracht started to work with a pilot group of women in order to test, improve the concept, then analyse the impact and the financial aspects. In 2011, Levenskracht replaced the Tippelzone.