Report on the CoP Workshop

Some 60 participants, representing about 50 organizations, joined the two-day workshop of the Scaling-Up Community of Practice (CoP), which took place on

March 15-16, 2018, in Arlington, VA. Management Systems International (MSI) graciously hosted the event, by offering its premises as well as food and refreshments. Participants engaged in lively discussions, exchanged experiences on scaling up, renewed old friendships and forged new contacts.

The program started with a general discussion of the progress with mainstreaming scaling up in the development agenda. This was followed by a sequence of sessions, each led by our various CoP working groups. The event closed with a session on the organization of the CoP and its possible future directions. A summary of each session is found below.

Session 1: Progress with mainstreaming scaling up

(Prepared by Johannes Linn, Brookings/R4D)

Johannes Linn introduced the session with an overview of progress for the mainstreaming agenda. He noted that now much more attention is being paid to scaling up than a decade ago, which provides great opportunities for more effective development interventions. However, there are also challenges, including the great variation in terminology and a plethora of frameworks which can be confusing for practitioners looking for usable operational approaches. Johannes noted that IDIA, an alliance of major development funders, had recently developed a simple framework and a toolbox of practical approaches drawing on a wide ranging literature review, summarized in our Newsletter #8 (see also http://insights.globalinnovationexchange.org). Johannes highlighted a few take-aways:

• Remember that scale of impact is what matters – a “scaling mindset” is what matters most.
• Use the approach you’re most comfortable with/ most suitable to the area/intervention at hand, and use it systematically.
• Assess scalability/sustainability with a systematic consideration of influencing/enabling conditions.
• Remember that iteration is important, but don’t get trapped in an endless loop of piloting.
• Learning/M&E are critical, but focus not only on impact, but also on influencing factors.
• The greatest challenge: how to put scaling into practice?

Larry Cooley led the ensuing discussion, focusing on the four questions facing those who want to put scaling into practice:

• How to move from a predominant focus on innovation to a balanced focus on “innovation with impact at scale”?
• How to link scaling to the SDGs?
• How to learn across different sectoral/thematic areas?
• How to mainstream the scaling idea into organizations (incl. governments), so that they move beyond one-off interventions/projects to a systematic scaling approach?

Participants agreed that these are the core questions which we face as practitioners and which we need to seek to address in our CoP.

Session 2: Health Working Group

(Prepared by Laura Ghiron, ExpandNet)

The Health Working Group is co-implemented with the Evidence to Action (E2A) Project’s Community of Practice on systematic approaches to scaling up family planning and other reproductive health interventions. The group’s panel included three interconnected presentations that focused on scale-up from different perspectives. In the first, Rita Badiani, Director of the USAID-funded E2A Project provided an overview of how the project had been promoting systematic attention to scale up through several different mechanisms. A key activity has been the E2A-led CoP which has had over 1800 participants from 51 countries in 8 webinars and 5 technical consultations over a five-year period. In addition, E2A has consistently included attention to scaling up in the projects it has supported in eight countries in Africa, using ExpandNet/WHO guidance documents and technical assistance from ExpandNet.

Next, Laura Ghiron provided a country-level description of how one E2A-funded project – the HoPE-LVB population, health and environment project implemented

in Kenya and Uganda – used the ExpandNet/WHO “Beginning with the End in Mind” tool and her guidance to develop a demonstration project in ways that would facilitate later scale up. Subsequently they used the “Nine Steps for Developing a Scaling-up Strategy” tool to develop a scaling-up strategy and manage the process of expansion and institutionalization. Ms. Ghiron discussed lessons learned citing both the achievements and the challenges faced in scaling up.

In the third presentation Joseph Petraglia discussed the interrelationship of complexity, adaptation and adaptive capacity. He highlighted the complex nature of development interventions and how as a result adaptation was central to successful scale up. This in turn is dependent on the capacity of implementers to think adaptively. Strengthening adaptive capacity therefore lies at the root of our ability to sustain and scale innovations successfully. Finally, the moderator Ruth Simmons provided summary observations linking the presentations and introducing table discussion on the challenge of balancing fidelity and adaptation in the process of scaling-up.

Session 3: Education Working Group

(Prepared by Nikita Tolani, MSI)

The objectives of the Education Working Group’s session at the Scaling Up workshop were to:

• share current initiatives, trends, and discussions happening around scaling in education with larger Community of Practice;
• learn from other sectors’ experiences, where relevant;
• build on the CoP meeting’s earlier discussions, such as health and adaptation, and feed into later discussions, such as M&E working group, and
• identify where there might be opportunities for cross-collaboration with members of the larger Community of Practice and concrete activities for the Education WG.

The overall session was facilitated by Jenny Perlman Robinson, a Fellow with the Center for Universal Education at Brookings Institution, and Dr. Nitika Tolani, with the Education Practice Area at MSI (and Chair of the Education WG). Panelists included Melany Sany (EDC), Josephine Kennedy (World Learning), and Tim Reilly (MSI).  Panelists discussed their practical experiences related to three “thorny” issues we face in the education sector:

• Education alliances–drawing lessons around mobilizing diverse actors from public, private and social sectors to align around shared incentives and outcomes.
• Flexible adaptation–looking at the process behind adapting and scaling an evidence-based approach across contexts, balancing fidelity to the original model with adaptation to the local context.
• Sustainability—focusing on breadth of impact while also recognizing that sustained impact is a critical dimension of scaling in education. What do we know about strategies to sustain the impact of quality education interventions at scale?

The Executive Committee will survey WG members to identify priorities for 2018 and potential knowledge products (webinars, guidance notes) on priorities that emerged during our session. Priorities included:

• Scoping exercise to establish costing norms for teacher training programs and other activities often taken to scale
• Development of detailed guidance and capacity development plans (over 5- and 10-year periods) for Ministerial departments to implement models themselves
• Scaling up practices within organizations, and unpacking cultural changes associated with successful “scaling out” initiatives in different contexts (including how to address resistance to change, how to make better use of civil society capacity)
• Exploring how to adapt programming models to different contexts, including fragile states
• Better and clearer marketing and positioning of lessons learned (successes and challenges) in the education sector related to scaling up.

Session 4: Agriculture and Rural Development (ARD) Working Group

(Prepared by Maria Elena Mangiafico, IFAD)

Impact at scale is increasingly becoming an important objective of many organizations that focus on agricultural development and/or agricultural research for development. However, not all interventions or innovations are scale-neutral: an intervention may function well at a low scale but face problems when brought to a larger scale (diseconomy of scale). Conversely, an intervention may not be performing (or its costs may be prohibitive) at a small scale but successful at a higher-scale. This dilemma does not only apply to agriculture but across sectors.

Then how do organizations decide when to invest in scaling or not? The ARD working group, chaired by Maria Elena Mangiafico from IFAD, discussed how to assess the scalability and the relative pathways that need to be pursued so that investments in research and development reach a larger number of poor people. These build on and/or complement the work already begun in this area by the Brookings Institution, MSI and IFAD.

Mark Huisenga, USAID.BFS.MPI, highlighted that scaling up agriculture technologies must be done through the appropriate pathway, whether via private partners, public partners or public-private partnerships. Extensive analyses have been done matching crops by market types to the most suitable pathways. New scalability assessment tools are now available for guiding decision making for scaling up agricultural innovations. Several of these tools were presented to the Community of Practice for consideration.

Ruben Doboin, representing the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF) – the innovation lab for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) – shared a tool being developed to manage the extent to which its portfolio is innovating and scaling. To this end, the tool scores projects in various dimensions, one of which is their probability of scaling.  By completing a multiple-choice questionnaire, project team leaders use the tool to score each project on the following dimensions: path to scale, plan for scale, credibility of the intervention, relative advantage over other models, transferability and ease of adoption, potential market size, and estimated costs for scaling.  The MIF received useful feedback during the session, including being cautious about scores, meanings and setting incentives. It was also emphasized that probability of scale is an input for portfolio management but not necessarily a judgment on project quality. The MIF could consider re-applying the tool during implementation rather than only ex-ante (perhaps as addendum to a scaling plan).

Lennart Woltering, CIMMYT, reiterated that current successful scaling efforts increasingly need to address “10 scaling ingredients”; that include, for example, financing, policies, and value chain development.  All 10 ingredients should be pursued in parallel in order to create an enabling environment for the technology or practice to be scaled. With this thinking in mind, CIMMYT developed a tool in which users develop a scaling plan and answer four to five strategic questions for each scaling ingredient. Tests conducted with a wide range of actors show that the tool increases awareness on the multiple dimensions of scaling and helps to identify and address where the bottlenecks for scaling lie.

The WG will continue to discuss and improve these tools and perhaps consolidate them if appropriate. All presentations are available on the working group’s website: http://www.agriscale4dev.org/.

Session 5: Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group

(Prepared by Larry Cooley, MSI)

The M&E Working Group presented a session entitled “Fit for Purpose: Monitoring and Evaluation Systems to Support Effective Scaling.” Larry Cooley provided an overview of the issue including a three-tier framework the Working Group has adopted as a way of highlighting the key monitoring, evaluation and analysis issues associated with scaling.  In this framework, Tier 1 concerns information needed for Proof of Concept; Tier 2 focuses on Refinement, Streamlining and Assessing Scalability of interventions; and Tier 3 relates to information needs associated with Change Management during and after scaling.  In an extended discussion, the group agreed that guidelines, methods and best practices for Tiers 2 and 3 are much less advanced than those for Tier 1 and committed itself to make contributions to elaborating and extending understanding of Tiers 2 and 3 in the coming year.   The plenary session also included a poll in which participants were asked how big a portion of a pilot project’s budget, on average, should be devoted to monitoring, evaluation, learning and communication, and concluded that the guideline should be 20%.  In a separate breakout session, 17 members of the M&E Working Group shared information about their current efforts and made a range of additional suggestions for M&E Working Group activities in the coming year.

Session 6: Fragile States Working Group

(Prepared by Jonathan Papoulides, WorldVision)

At the CoP annual meeting, the fragile states working group hosted a session on promising approaches for scaling in the hardest places. Jonathan Papoulidis, the working group chair, presented a new scaling-up in fragile states framework that was co-created with Larry Cooley and featured in the journal “Development”: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41301-0180155-8. A summary of this paper was included in CoP Newsletter #9.  The framework emphasizes the value of using scaling as an “organizing framework” for bringing together diverse resources, partners and priorities and focusing efforts on a triple bottom line:  meeting widespread needs, building resilience to shocks and stress and helping address the root causes of fragility by changing patterns of cooperation and exclusion, strengthening “social capital” and focusing on state/ society narratives around service delivery.

Rashad Massoud, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice-President at URC and Director of USAID’s Applying Science to Strengthen and Improve Systems (ASSIST) program gave a presentation on the “wave sequence” scaling approach which has had impressive results in diverse fragile contexts in Uganda, Afghanistan and Gaza.  The “wave sequence” combines adaptive learning and management approaches with a focus on blending formal and informal health capacities and using social capital (peer to peer learning, relationships, networks for problem-solving and implementation) to achieve high rates of primary health care success at wide-scale.  The paper can be accessed here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4184307/

Sarmad Khan, Policy Advisor and Team Lead, Leadership Development, the Development Operations Coordination Office (DOCO), United Nations, outlined the current development system reform process and efforts to reinvigorate the Resident Coordinator System and UN Country Teams.   This includes an increasing focus on fragile contexts and scaling-up approaches, including what may become a new “scaling observatory” to support efforts to “leave no one behind” in fragile states.

The ensuing discussion among CoP members highlighted the importance of choosing to scale outcomes and not particular/uniform projects which may be rendered ineffective or unsustainable in fluid contexts, embracing adaptive development strategies and aid effectiveness principles for structuring collaborative scaling initiatives that are fit for purpose, and continuously navigating the political economy and conflict patterns in fragile contexts.  The discussion also affirmed the importance of applying scaling approaches across the humanitarian and development “divide” to sustain post-crisis momentum and political attention, overcome collection action problems between operational silos, and ensure foresight and solutions for transitional financing gaps between relief and development. The fragile states working group will focus discussion on these issues moving forward.

Session 7: The future of the Scaling Up CoP

(Prepared by Larry Cooley, MSI)

The discussion began by observing that community is doing very well, but is fragile in its current form and could be doing many things that it currently is not doing. The group agreed that the CoP will, in the medium term, need some form of financial support.  The group discussed the option of paid membership but concluded that, on balance, the standard should be, as one participant noted, “participate to play”, not “pay to play”. Participants agreed to give careful thought, and to respond to Larry and Johannes, regarding possible sources of funding for the CoP or for some of its activities.  It was observed that it would assist that effort if members could come back to us with examples of where their engagement with the CoP has been helpful to them and their institutions.

Alternative models of CoP governance and leadership were also discussed.  There was, in general, support for the current arrangements but this was tempered by the realization that exclusive reliance on pro bono efforts, leadership by Larry and Johannes, and reliance on MSI logistic support impose limits on the CoP’s range of activities and sustainability.  It was noted that an 8-member Executive Committee has been formed, including the chairs of all 5 Working Groups.

There was consensus on the value of using the CoP more systematically to advocate within the donor community for a more determined emphasis on scaling, possibly including the issuance by the CoP of collective position statements, guidelines and sign-on letters on relevant issues.   It was also observed that our voices would be enhanced if members would, when appropriate, brand themselves as members of this CoP and take the initiative to speak on behalf of the CoP when promoting the adoption of a scaling mindset. (“My name is x, from organization y, and I am an active member of the Community of Practice on Scaling Development Outcomes.”)  To that end, it was agreed that the CoP leadership would provide members for 3-4 slides, branded by the CoP, that we could all use in speaking on behalf of the community.

A discussion was held, but no decision reached, regarding the concept of CoP (and Working Group) membership.  This included consideration of the pros and cons of open vs invited participation.  It was agreed that this should be a topic of discussion for the Executive Committee.  For the time being, any new individuals with interest in joining the CoP should be directed to Larry and Johannes, and the Working Group chairs should perform a similar gatekeeping function with regard to their respective Working Groups.

There was strong support for the structure and current array of Working Groups and for maintaining faceto-face meetings of the entire CoP at approximately 18-month intervals.  There was also strong support for doing everything possible to promote participation by colleagues from the Global South.

Options were discussed for how the CoP could add additional value virtually in the form of passive sites and active exchanges, some of which could be overseen by the various Working Groups, and both the Working Group chairs and the Executive Committee agreed to give this matter further attention.

News of the Scaling Up Community of Practice

Sectoral and Thematic Working Groups

Five Working Groups in scaling up in regard to selected topics are active under the umbrella of the Scaling Up Community of Practice. These are listed below with the names and e-mail addresses of the coordinators. For more information on the agenda of each working group or how to join a working group please contact the respective coordinator(s).

Special Features

Millions Learning: Seeking to identify where and how education interventions are scaling quality learning for children and youth in low- and middle-income countries around the world

By Jenny Perlman Robinson (jperlman@brookings.edu) and Molly Curtiss (mcurtiss@brookings.edu), Brookings

Millions Learning (https://www.brookings.edu/series/ millions-learning/), a project of the Center for Universal Education (CUE) (https://www.brookings.edu/center/ center-for-universal-education/) at the Brookings Institution, focuses on the question of how to scale quality education for all children and youth. In the second phase of the project, CUE is launching Real-time Scaling Labs in partnership with local institutions in a number of countries to generate more evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in global education, encouraging a stronger link between research and practice. These labs are not physical spaces, but rather a process established by CUE and partner institutions to learn from, support, and document existing efforts to scale interventions focused on improving children’s learning as they unfold in real-time.

Over the past six months, CUE has developed a general framework and approach for implementing the labs based on adaptive programming and continuous learning methodologies and feedback from global colleagues. Each individual lab will tailor this overarching framework with local partners to their specific context. The lab process involves a series of in-person and virtual convenings with diverse stakeholders around an education initiative in the process of scaling. During the multi-year lab process, participants will periodically convene to identify scaling goals, develop and/or refine scaling action plans, and engage in a participatory and iterative process of implementing the scaling plan, reflecting on progress and making course corrections along the way. Throughout the lab process, CUE will draw from relevant research, global experience, and external expertise to provide practical recommendations, as well as observe and document the scaling process as it unfolds to help inform future efforts.

While each individual lab will focus primarily on its own education initiative(s) and the challenges and opportunities it faces in bringing that initiative to scale, CUE will also foster opportunities for cross communication, knowledge sharing, and peer-to-peer learning between the labs, through virtual meetings and webinars and occasional in-person convenings. Beyond testing the Millions Learning framework and exploring various scaling pathways and approaches, in each of the labs CUE will also focus on education alliances, drawing lessons around mobilizing diverse actors from public, private, and social sectors to align around shared incentives and outcomes; and flexible adaptation, looking at the critical question of adapting and scaling an effective approach across contexts.

CUE is currently planning or in discussions to launch Real-time Scaling Labs with partners in a number of locations, including but not limited to Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Jordan, Tanzania, and the U.S. city of Philadelphia.  CUE is also in the process of hiring a Project Director (https://careers-brookings. icims.com/jobs/1730/project-director/job?mobile=false&width=890&height=500&bga=true&needsRedirect=false&jan1offset=-300&jun1offset=-240) for the team, to co-develop and manage the design and plans for the Millions Learning project. Please share the vacancy widely with your networks and do not hesitate to reach out to Jenny Perlman Robinson to discuss the project further (jperlman@brookings.edu).

Evidence Action: Measurably recuing the burden of poverty for hundreds of millions of people

By Anne Healy, Evidence Action (anne.healy@evidenceaction.org)

Evidence Action (https://www.evidenceaction.org) aims to be a world leader in scaling evidence-based, cost-effective programs to reduce the burden of poverty. We do this both by leading flagship, at-scale, cost-effective programs and through our in-house incubator charged with developing the next generation of at-scale, cost-effective programs. Our current two flagship programs at scale are the Deworm the World Initiative (https://www. evidenceaction.org/dewormtheworld/) and Dispensers for Safe Water (https://www.evidenceaction.org/dispensersforsafewater/), both of which are grounded in evidence from randomized controlled trials. Deworm the World delivers mass school-based deworming treatments by partnering with governments in 6 countries with an average cost-per-treatment-per-child of under $0.50, reaching over 275M children in 2017 (up from ~90M million children in 2015). The Dispensers program provides safe water access for 4.7 million rural individuals in East Africa at a cost of less than $1 per person per year, and is testing a partnership model, working with organizations such as CARE Ethiopia and other international NGOs to explore new models for scaling the program.

We also create, test, and scale the next generation of at-scale cost-effective programs through our in-house incubator (https://www.evidenceaction.org/beta) of promising, evidence-based innovations (known as “Beta”). Beta designs, prototypes, tests, and delivers measurably impactful, cost-effective programs that are ready for scaled implementation by Evidence Action and our partners (many of whom are governments). Our incubation portfolio portfolio includes programs, such as No Lean Season (https://www.evidenceaction.org/ beta-no-lean-season) , which tackles seasonal poverty by offering conditional interest-free loans to agricultural laborers in Bangladesh to help them migrate and find temporary work during the hunger (or “lean”) season. Our incubation portfolio also includes Winning Start (https://www.evidenceaction.org/beta-winning-start) , designed to improve literacy and numeracy among primary school students in collaboration with the Government of Kenya’s national youth service program, G-United.

GiveWell recognized (https://blog.givewell. org/2017/11/27/our-top-charities-for-giving-season-2017/) 3 of Evidence Action’s programs (Deworm the World, No Lean Season, and Dispensers for Safe Water) with 2017 Top Charity or Standout Charity status for their outstanding cost-effectiveness. Evidence Action’s work has also recently been featured in The Economist (https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21735597-paying-poor-rural-families-send-seasonal-workers-city-seems-work), NPR (https://www.npr.org/ sections/goatsandsoda/2017/12/28/572911406/wantto-help-someone-in-a-poor-village-give-them-a-busticket-out), and Vox Dev, see here (https://voxdev.org/topic/ methods-measurement/path-scale-randomised-control-trial-scalable-programme) and here (https://voxdev. org/topic/methods-measurement/path-scale-replication-general-equilibrium-effects-and-new-settings), and it has been recognized by funders and organizations, such as the Global Innovation Fund, USAID’s Development Innovation Ventures, and startup accelerator, YCombinator.

Member News

CASE at Duke (General Scaling)

As part of its Scaling Pathways (http://scalingpathways. globalinnovationexchange.org) series, CASE at Duke, the Skoll Foundation, Mercy Corps, and USAID help answer the question “Which financing strategies best support impact at scale?” with the release of Financing for Scaled Impact (https://static.globalinnovationexchange.org/s3fs-public/asset/document/Scaling%20 Pathways_Financing%20for%20Scaled%20Impact_0. pdf?goHK759iyLqBu2JoQoGwbaoGOI9j5KIw).  Drawing on insights and experiences of over 100 social enterprises from the Skoll Foundation and USAID Development Innovation Ventures portfolios, Financing for Scaled Impact provides a new framework for considering the levers an organization can use to finance impact at scale.    Financing for Scaled Impact is the first in a five-part series that will go in-depth into some of the most vexing topics for social ventures looking to scale their impact: financing, forging government partnerships, defining pathways to scale, gathering and using data, and attracting and retaining the right talent.  Visit Scaling Pathways (http://scalingpathways.globalinnovationexchange.org) for more.

Contact: Kim Langsam (kimberly.langsam@duke.edu)

Education Development Center (EDC) (Education)

“Roots and Wings: Lessons on Scale from the Weekend School” (2017), blog by Mary Burns

What can a Dutch supplementary school program teach us about successful scaling? As Mary Burns argues in this post, quite a lot, particularly for those of us who work on international education projects. In a nutshell: Once a critical mass of highly knowledgeable and committed individuals who have lived and been transformed by an experience takes root, the other elements of scale can more easily be established. Without depth, there is no shift in ownership, spread and sustainability. Without depth, scale is ephemeral and quantitative, not deep and lasting.

https://medium.com/@mcburns/ roots-and-wings-23cdddb4630b

“The Myths of Scaling-up: How misconceptions about scaling-up can hurt high-quality implementation” (2014), blog by Mary Burns

Going to scale is the Holy Grail of donor-funded international education development projects. Scale is seen as both a requisite for and the logical culmination of any “successful” donor- or government-funded education program. The focus on scale makes sense: Who doesn’t want the greatest number of teachers instructed in the most cost-efficient manner or every child in every region to receive the same high-quality literacy approach? Yet, from what I’ve seen, our notions of scale are grounded in a series of myths—misconceptions about what scale is, how easy it is to do, and what types of interventions should be scaled—that paradoxically serve to undermine the quality outcomes we say we want. Below I explore what I see as the five most common myths associated with “scaling up” in international teacher education projects.

https://www.globalpartnership.org/blog/myths-scaling

Contact: Mary Burns (mburns@edc.org)

ExpandNet (Reproductive health)

The Resource Team guiding the Evidence to Action(E2A)-led Scaling up Community of Practice with support from ExpandNet met twice since the last newsletter. The key feature of the December 2017 meeting was a presentation by Joseph Petraglia’s, (Director, Syntegral), on the critical role of complexity and adaptation scale up. In the March 2018 Resource Team meeting Wynne Norton, (Program Officer, Implementation Science Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes for Health) made a presentation entitled “Adaptation and Sustainability of Evidence-based Interventions”. The presentation provided an important opportunity to compare the experience of adaptation and scale-up of public health prevention programs in the US with the experiences in the field of international family planning and other reproductive health programs. The March Resource Team meeting continued planning future activities, including a Technical Convening on the relationship between adaptation, scale-up and sustainability. This convening will be held July 11, 2018 in Washington, DC. Members of the CoP on Development Outcomes will receive an invitation via email. If you are interested in joining the online E2A-led health-focused CoP, please consider registering on the Knowledge Gateway (https://knowledge-gateway.org/global/ibpmembers/scale-up).  If you would like to participate as a member of the Resource Team that guides the work of the health-focused CoP, please be in touch with Laura Ghiron directly at ljghiron@umich.edu.

In addition to leading the E2A Community of Practices on Systematic Approaches to Scale up of Family Planning/Reproductive Health, the ExpandNet team has continued to support scaling-up activities in Nigeria, Pakistan and the DRC. In recognition of the importance of the topics of adaptation and sustainability in scale-up, the ExpandNet Secretariat also organized a small review and reflection meeting on these topics.

Contact: Laura Ghiron and Ruth Simmons (ljghiron@ umich.edu and rsimmons@umich.edu )

Global Solutions Summit (General scaling)

The Global Solutions Summit (GSS) will convene at the United Nations in New York City on June 4, 2018. GSS 2018 is based on the premise that scientific research to find new or improved development solutions is a first small step in the very long journey from the lab to the last mile. The remaining steps entail the less-glamorous and more mundane issues of scaling up the deployment of these solutions so that they reach tens, if not hundreds of millions of people in developing countries. GSS 2018, therefore, will focus on the organizational, entrepreneurial, financial, sociological and managerial dimensions of scaling technology deployment. It will showcase specific business models and financial mechanisms that NGOs, social enterprises, foundations and others are using to successfully deploy proven, cost-effective development solutions at scale. Speakers will be thoughtful doers — i.e., women and men who are actively working in the field to overcome these deployment challenges – who will explain what they have done, how they did it, what went right and what went wrong, where gaps or broken circuits exist in the deployment ecosystem, and what needs to be done to create a more effective and efficient ecosystem that can support the deployment of these innovations on the scale required to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

Further information is available at www.globalsolutionssummit.com. Please circulate this announcement to friends and colleagues. Registration is free and open to all interested participants. Please check the Summit website after April 17 for detailed registration information.

Contact: Alfred Watkins at alfred.watkins07@gmail.com.

MacArthur Foundation (General Scaling)

On December 20, 2017 MacArthur awarded a $100 million grant to Sesame Workshop and International Rescue Committee (IRC) to educate young children displaced by conflict and persecution in the Middle East under its 100&Change initiative. 100&Change is MacArthur’s competition for a $100 million grant to fund a single proposal that promises real and measurable progress in solving a critical problem of our time. Proposals from any field or problem area were considered. The three runners up each received a $15 million grant. See https://www.macfound.org/ press/press-releases/sesame-workshop-and-international-rescue-committee-awarded-100-million-early-childhood-education-syrian-refugees/ and https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/21/world/ middleeast/macarthur-sesame-street-refugees.htmlrref=collection%2Fsectioncollection2Fworld&action=click&contentCollection=world&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=10&pgtype=sectionfront

Contact: Kristen Molyneaux (kmolyneau@macfound. org)

Room to Read (Education)

Erin Ganju and Cory Heyman co-authored the book “Scaling Global Change: A Social Entrepreneur’s Guide to Surviving the Start-up Phase and Driving”, which will be releases in hardcover on April 24, 2018. This book is a “how to” guide for social entrepreneurs who have a vision to change the world and need a strong organizational foundation to do it. By sharing insight into Room to Read’s story, (they’re one of the fastest growing non-profits in the past 16 years), it will provide the theoretical underpinnings and practical business lessons for growing a non-profit or social enterprise, particularly in how to cross the chasm between enthusiastic start-up to mature, worldwide brand recognition, influence, and change. Scaling Social Change outlines strong theories of change in three realms: program effectiveness, operational excellence, and strategic influence that will aid social entrepreneurs and organizational leaders of all kinds in applying discipline and the resourcefulness in translating their theories in to action that can scale to really change the world. (https://www.amazon. com/Scaling-Global-Change-Entrepreneurs-Surviving/ dp/1119483859/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1513512508&sr=8-1&keywords=scaling+global+change)

Contact: Cory Heyman (cory.heyman@roomtoread.org)

Publications and Blogs

Tackling how new technologies can help the world’s poorest” (April 2018) by Catherine Cheney (DEVEX)

https://www.devex.com/news/tackling-how-new-technologies-can-help-the-world-s-poorest-92534

To understand how emerging technologies such as automation and artificial intelligence can benefit the poorest, start with the problem, not the solution. That was a key takeaway from a recent session at the Skoll World Forum called “Emerging Technologies: Shifting the Path from Poverty to Prosperity?”

“Doing while Learning Project – Action research report: Reflections on a practitioner-centred application of developmental evaluation” (2014) by BRAC

http://innovation.brac.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/Action-research-141202.pdf

BRAC’s Doing while Learning project, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation, engaged practitioners to understand real-time scale-up efforts, created a network to enable peer sharing and support intermediation and developed practitioner-friendly tools for scaling innovations as part of an effort to raise awareness and appreciation for its value. The key questions were how practitioners in South Asia work towards achieving scale under conditions of social complexity and what enables them to be successful at scaling up effective models.