Planning and costing for the acceleration of actions for nutrition: experiences of countries in the Movement for Scaling Up Nutrition

This report is a synthesis of work undertaken by countries in the movement for Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN). The costed nutrition plans for 20 countries are analysed, looking at the assumptions made, the priority areas and targets which were set and the methods used, to determine whether they are responsive to the identified needs. It provides a basis for identifying priority areas for investment in each country, exploring answers to the questions - Are plans aligned with evidence-based recommendations? Is responsibility going beyond health sector? Which other sectors are engaged? What is the balance between specific nutrition interventions, nutrition-sensitive approaches and governance? What are the opportunities for non-Government stakeholders? Each country’s data is presented in a 2 page summary, outlining the scale of malnutrition, the distribution of programmes between specific, sensitive and governance and an outline of the costs, priorities and funding gaps. The plans themselves all have different strengths and weaknesses. This heterogeneity is inevitable, if only because countries have different interlinked sets of nutrition problems as this report clearly shows. But countries also have different sets of nutrition capacities. Importantly, the heterogeneity of the plans is a strength, not a weakness. As Lawrence Haddad concludes, “the plans serve as the most credible basis for investments to accelerate the reduction of undernutrition. They should be analysed, used, improved and backed

Reaching more farmers: Innovative approaches to scaling up climate-smart agriculture

The purpose of this working paper is to provide insight into how we can use novel approaches to scale up research findings on climate-smart agriculture (CSA) to meaningfully address the challenges of poverty and climate change. The approaches described include those based on value chains and private sector involvement, policy engagement, and information and communication technologies and agro-advisory services. The paper draws on 11 case studies to exemplify these new approaches to scaling up. These are synthesised using a simple conceptual framework that draws on a review of the most important challenges to scaling up. This provides the material for a discussion around how particular scaling up approaches can help to address some of the challenges of scaling up. The analysis offers insights into scaling approaches, challenges and some opportunities for scaling CSA practices and technologies. We conclude that multi-stakeholder platforms and policy making networks are key to effective upscaling, especially if paired with capacity enhancement, learning, and innovative approaches to support decision making of farmers. Projects that aim to intervene upstream at higher leverage points can be highly efficient and probably offer cost-effective dissemination strategies that reach across scales and include new and more diverse partnerships. However, these novel approaches still face challenges of promoting uptake, which remain contextualized and thus require a certain level of local engagement, while continuously paying attention to farmer’s needs and their own situations

A Funder Journey: Scaling Up the Stone Family Foundation

This report follows the journey of one foundation from its inception to the present day. It highlights the work of an effective funder, and shares lessons that can be applied to funding more widely. The Stone Family Foundation is an example of how a relatively new and mid-sized foundation has looked to scale up and develop how it works and what it funds. The lessons learned from implementing the major grants program influenced the shape of its subsequent WASH funding. While this exact journey may be specific to the Stone Family Foundation, the general process -- starting out, planning, delivering, learning and then adapting -- will be relevant to other funders grappling with the same questions about how to become an effective funder

Scaling?up ICDS: Can Universalisation Address Persistent Malnutrition?

A countrywide initiative, the ICDS programme is India's primary response to addressing child malnutrition, but has had mixed success on the state of malnutrition in India. This article reviews the ICDS from the perspective of a scaling?up management framework and analyses aspects of design, advocacy, implementation and monitoring in the scaling?up of ICDS. Universalisation of ICDS with quality is well within the means of government and recent advocacy has resulted in increased funding; the scaling?up of ICDS is challenging. Successful scaling?up of ICDS requires the implementation of a multicomponent model, demanding a high level of quality and performance, coordination and convergence in the face of varying and limited management and technical capacity, poor governance environments, and little experience of engaging communities. Success in addressing these constraints is possible but attention to detail is critical and lessons should be adapted to suit local context

Asset Building for Social Change: Pathways to Large-Scale Impact

Provides an in-depth examination of current and historic initiatives, in an effort to discern patterns of successful scaling up from among Ford's Assets Program portfolios worldwide

Scaling up community action for tackling climate change

Tackling climate change requires a set of deeply intertwined geographical responsibilities whereby actors at and across different geographical scales are intimately connected. Creating effective strategies requires far more than an invocation for individual behavioural change in thinking globally and acting locally, but attention to the multi‐scalar conflicts, tensions and also opportunities to develop the most appropriate collective responses. In this paper, we use the example of community gardening initiatives in a large UK city to critically interrogate the problems facing groups at the local neighbourhood level in pursuing sustainability agendas. We focus on the organizational imperative to create a multi‐scalar food policy partnership at the city level as a way of confronting dominant global neoliberal urban competitiveness agendas. Our results emphasize the critical importance of scalar politics in enabling effective climate change strategies

Millions Learning: Scaling Up Quality Education In Developing Countries

An estimated "100-year gap" persists between education levels in developed and developing countries, and if business proceeds as usual in the education sector, this gap is not projected to close. Today, 250 million children around the globe--many of them having spent at least four years of school in a developing country--lack the most basic literacy and numeracy skills. Additionally, countries around the world are struggling to help young people develop 21st-century skills, such as critical thinking and collaborative problem solving, which are increasingly demanded by the labor market. "Millions Learning" tells the story of where and how quality education has scaled in the developing world. The story emerges from wide-ranging research on scaling and learning, including 14 in-depth case studies, from Brazil and Honduras, to Uganda and Zambia, to Jordan and India.What we found is that from the slums of New Delhi to the rainforest in Brazil, transformational change in children's learning is happening at large scale in many places around the world. We found that successful scaling of quality learning often occurs when new approaches and ideas are allowed to develop and grow on the margins and then spread to reach many more children and youth. What constitutes the margins varies on a case-by-case basis. For some, it means a flexible central government giving freedom to its officials within a district to try a new approach. For others, it involves a community movement that develops new ways of reaching marginalized children whose educational options are limited.Scaling from the margins occurs in two main ways: idea adoption, namely the spread of new approaches across an education ecosystem, and delivery innovation, the development of new ways to deliver education to marginalized children and youth. With the former, effective new approaches to improving components of the teaching and learning process--from curriculum, to materials, to teacher development--have spread across education ecosystems and been adopted by different actors. With the latter, new education delivery approaches for the most marginalized communities--such as distance learning models or alternative education programs--have developed and grown within and across countries. We identified 14 core ingredients, in different combinations depending on the context, contribute to scaling quality learning. Each of these ingredients is central for scaling effective approaches that improve learning. Their importance is frequently reinforced from evidence in the broader scaling literature. They include essential elements for designing, delivering, financing, and enabling scaling of quality education