Prepare To Scale Up

STEPS
BEFORE YOU SCALE UP
  1. Have a vision to scale up from the beginning of the project.
  2. Determine the effectiveness of the approach.
  3. Assess the potential to scale up.
  4. Develop an evaluation plan
  5. Build a consensus to scale up.
  6. Advocate for supportive policies.
AS YOU SCALE UP
  1. Define the roles, relationships and responsibilities of implementing partners.
  2. Secure funding and other resources.
  3. Develop the partners' capacity to implement the program.
  4. Establish and maintain a monitoring and evaluation system.
  5. Support institutional development for scale.

BEFORE YOU SCALE UP…

STEP 4: Consolidate, define and refine.

The program design and/or interventions should be simplified as much as possible and written documents should be accessible in user friendly language. Documenting and refining successful approaches is the first step. Systems need to be clear and easy to use; program training designs, for example, and monitoring, evaluation and supervision systems need to be easily replicable. To develop and test systems and ensure that they retain the core values and elements of the program's success requires adequate time and resources.

A mistake often made when a program expands is that only the results of the pilot program are replicated, not the process that led to them. For example, if pilot communities determined through their analysis and planning that they should form a health committee to coordinate community health activities, what is scaled up is that all participating communities should have health committees. What is lost is the more important process-that communities engaged in regular dialogue through which they themselves determined a particular course of action (in this case, forming a health committee).